Harriet gazed at her dismayed, at a loss. Heretofore Alexina had taken her tears to Nelly or had kept them to herself.
“They are going away,” she said, “King William and them; going in the boat.”
This, as a matter to cry about, was a mystery to Harriet. “Going where?” she asked.
“To get the golden fleece,” her weeping niece assured her.
“Well,” said Harriet amused, “let us hope they may find it, but why the tears?”
Alexina got up and carried her tears to her own room. It spoke her infantile capacity to discriminate that she bore away no resentment; there are things that the Aunt Harriets with the best wills in the world need not be expected to understand.
King William’s mother, telling her, had held her tight and rocked her; King William’s father, when he saw her lip trembling afterward, had lifted her on his knee.
Going into the big, high room which was her own, Alexina shut the door. Then she cast herself on the floor. A little hand, beating about wildly, came upon Sally Ann, lying unregarded there. Gathering her in fiercely, presently the sobs grew quieter. Later she wiped her eyes upon her child and, kissing her tenderly, put her down and went over to King William’s; the time was short and she could have Sally Ann afterward.
The next day the cottage was closed and the shutters made fast. Alexina felt lonesome even to look over there, and Sally Anns are but silent comforters.
But in a year the Leroys came back from St. Louis, between which city and New Orleans the splendid new “King William” had been plying. The judgment of Captain Leroy had been at fault, which is a sad thing when a man is sixty. The day of the steamboat had passed, because that of the railroad had come. The “King William” as a venture was a failure.