When they had left him and were nearly at their own door they were stopped by the sound of his crutches on the stairs below. Hester ran back to see what he wanted.
“Don’t come up, Jack,” she called, running down to meet him. “Did we leave something behind?”
“It’s this, Miss Hester,” reaching out a note. “He gave it to me—I nearly forgot. Please forgive me,” penitently.
“Of course, Jack,” taking it from him and turning again she went upstairs.
It was only a thin sheet of paper, folded three-cornered, on which in pencil was scrawled her name. But she opened it on the stairs with a mixture of curiosity and tenderness which she would have been at a loss to define had any analysis of her feelings been required of her.
“I had hoped to see you,” it said, without any other beginning, “but that failing, I have stolen a moment here at the Armory to say good-bye. It was not a friend but I, myself, to whom you were such a help and inspiration that evening. When I come back will you let me thank you for that and—more? The bit of gold you gave me I am carrying with me as a mascot. Do you mind? And if I prove as fearless and brave a soldier as you I shall thank God for making me of the right stuff. Will you pray that it may be so? Good-bye.”
She stood quite still for a moment when she had finished reading, then brushed her hand quickly over her eyes and went on into their apartment. Finding Julie she handed her the bit of paper and said gayly, though Julie thought there was a suspicious huskiness in her voice, “See, Julie dear, a note from a really, truly soldier.” And before Julie could speak she whisked out of the room and until Bridget called her to dinner, was seen no more.
A month passed, during which, in spite of the excitement over war and the subsequent depression along certain lines of business, their work increased from day to day. And in the midst of all this bustle and rush when each hour exacted of them the very limit of their endurance, Mr. Dale died. He went to sleep with God as peacefully as a little child. At first the girls could not believe it. They had grown so used to the long hours in which he slept, so accustomed to the paralysis which kept his mind and body apathetic, that they could not conceive that he would not wake again and turn his eyes fondly on them as before. When finally he was carried out of the little home and laid in his last resting place they began to realize that God had released him from his earthly thraldom and given them another saint in heaven. With characteristic courage they lived through those first days when the awful loneliness pressed so heavily upon them, and with characteristic determination took up their work struggling to go on as if nothing had happened. But it was hard—harder than any other sorrow which had come to them—for the whole incentive of their work was gone. It was as if the very mainspring of their lives had snapped and broken.
In the long solemn talks the girls had together at this time Julie urged that they must be as faithful to their father’s precepts as they had tried to be while he was with them. And she dwelt very much on the fact that he was still with them, guiding and loving them as much as during all those years before he was stricken down. And Hester believed this too for they had been taught the beauty of the inner, spiritual life that counts for immortality and makes all separation merely a transitory thing bridged over by love. So they felt their beloved father still with them, though Hester often brokenly whispered that working was robbed of its incentive now that they were no longer “making a home for Dad.”