“No, I shouldn’t like to think of my husband feeling like that, knowing that he couldn’t tell me of his dearest hopes and plans and ambitions, and feel sure of my sympathy. No, that wouldn’t be being married, really married.”
A little longer she sat with her chin in her hand and stared at the open door of the tiny room. Her face gradually took on a stern expression that made it, notwithstanding its youthful smoothness, curiously like her father’s.
“No,” she said aloud as she rose, “it can’t be. It’s just as impossible still as it has been all the time—even if I did think for a little while—”
Her face suddenly melted into tenderness and her voice sank to a whisper. “It was a lovely dream while it lasted, and I’m glad—it didn’t do anybody, not even me, any harm, and I’m glad—yes, I’m glad—I had it!” The little lines at the corners of her mouth deepened, her upper lip lifted, and her flashing smile lit up her countenance and shone in her eyes. “It’s almost like looking back on having been married for a little while!” she thought.
CHAPTER XVIII
“Rhoda,” called Mrs. Ware from the veranda steps, “will you come here, please?”
Rhoda was standing between the rows of lilac that hedged the walk to the front gate, inspecting the swelling buds and saying to herself with pleasure that they looked as if they would bloom early that year. The lilac was her best-loved flower and these two lines of bushes had been planted because of her pleading, ten years before. Every season she watched anxiously for the buds to show sign of returning life, and Charlotte declared that after they began to swell she measured them with a tape line every day to mark their growth. When they bloomed she kept bowls of the flowers all over the house and was rarely without a spray in her hair or her dress.
Mrs. Ware noted that her daughter’s step was not as brisk as usual and saw that the glow was gone from her face, while into her eyes had come a look of wistfulness. Believing she knew the cause, she longed to take the girl in her arms and say, “Don’t worry, dear. He’ll be here soon, I’m sure, for I wrote to him to come.” But she thought it best to keep her own secrets and so what she said was:
“Mrs. Winston has just sent word that little Harriet is worse and she wants your father to come at once. He’s not likely to be back here before noon. So I want you to drive me over to their house and then take the message to your father—I know where he is—so he can stop there before he comes home. Get ready at once, honey. I’ve told Jim to harness up, and I’ve only to put on my bonnet.”
Charlotte watched them as they drove down the hill, thinking discontentedly, “Mother doesn’t care half as much about me as she does about Rhoda. She’d just give her eyes to have Rhoda marry Jeff, and she never shows the least interest that way in me. I don’t believe she’d care if I was to be an old maid. An old maid! Oh, la! Well, I’m not going to, and I’ll not marry anybody in Hillside, either.”