Miss Roxy, who beyond the first salutations had taken no part in this conversation, had from time to time regarded Mara over the tops of her spectacles with looks of grave apprehension; and Mara, looking up, now encountered one of these glances.
"Have you taken the dock and dandelion tea I told you about?" said the wise woman, rather abruptly.
"Yes, Aunt Roxy, I have taken them faithfully for two weeks past."
"And do they seem to set you up any?" said Miss Roxy.
"No, I don't think they do. Grandma thinks I'm better, and grandpa, and I let them think so; but Miss Roxy, can't you think of something else?"
Miss Roxy laid aside the straw bonnet which she was ripping, and motioned Mara into the outer room,—the sink-room, as the sisters called it. It was the scullery of their little establishment,—the place where all dish-washing and clothes-washing was generally performed,—but the boards of the floor were white as snow, and the place had the odor of neatness. The open door looked out pleasantly into the deep forest, where the waters of the cove, now at high tide, could be seen glittering through the trees. Soft moving spots of sunlight fell, checkering the feathery ferns and small piney tribes of evergreen which ran in ruffling wreaths of green through the dry, brown matting of fallen pine needles. Birds were singing and calling to each other merrily from the green shadows of the forest,—everything had a sylvan fullness and freshness of life. There are moods of mind when the sight of the bloom and freshness of nature affects us painfully, like the want of sympathy in a dear friend. Mara had been all her days a child of the woods; her delicate life had grown up in them like one of their own cool shaded flowers; and there was not a moss, not a fern, not an upspringing thing that waved a leaf or threw forth a flower-bell, that was not a well-known friend to her; she had watched for years its haunts, known the time of its coming and its going, studied its shy and veiled habits, and interwoven with its life each year a portion of her own; and now she looked out into the old mossy woods, with their wavering spots of sun and shadow, with a yearning pain, as if she wanted help or sympathy to come from their silent recesses.
She sat down on the clean, scoured door-sill, and took off her straw hat. Her golden-brown hair was moist with the damps of fatigue, which made it curl and wave in darker little rings about her forehead; her eyes,—those longing, wistful eyes,—had a deeper pathos of sadness than ever they had worn before; and her delicate lips trembled with some strong suppressed emotion.
"Aunt Roxy," she said suddenly, "I must speak to somebody. I can't go on and keep up without telling some one, and it had better be you, because you have skill and experience, and can help me if anybody can. I've been going on for six months now, taking this and taking that, and trying to get better, but it's of no use. Aunt Roxy, I feel my life going,—going just as steadily and as quietly every day as the sand goes out of your hour-glass. I want to live,—oh, I never wanted to live so much, and I can't,—oh, I know I can't. Can I now,—do you think I can?"
Mara looked imploringly at Miss Roxy. The hard-visaged woman sat down on the wash-bench, and, covering her worn, stony visage with her checked apron, sobbed aloud.
Mara was confounded. This implacably withered, sensible, dry woman, beneficently impassive in sickness and sorrow, weeping!—it was awful, as if one of the Fates had laid down her fatal distaff to weep.