"Well, it's natur' to want to live," said Miss Roxy. "Life is sweet, and in a gen'l way we was made to live. Don't worry; the Lord'll bring you right when His time comes. Folks isn't always supported jest when they want to be, nor as they want to be; but yet they're supported fust and last. Ef I was to tell you how as I has hope in your case, I shouldn't be a-tellin' you the truth. I hasn't much of any; only all things is possible with God. If you could kind o' give it all up and rest easy in His hands, and keep a-doin' what you can,—why, while there's life there's hope, you know; and if you are to be made well, you will be all the sooner."
"Aunt Roxy, it's all right; I know it's all right. God knows best; He will do what is best; I know that; but my heart bleeds, and is sore. And when I get his letters,—I got one yesterday,—it brings it all back again. Everything is going on so well; he says he has done more than all he ever hoped; his letters are full of jokes, full of spirit. Ah, he little knows,—and how can I tell him?"
"Child, you needn't yet. You can jest kind o' prepare his mind a little."
"Aunt Roxy, have you spoken of my case to any one,—have you told what you know of me?"
"No, child, I hain't said nothin' more than that you was a little weakly now and then."
"I have such a color every afternoon," said Mara. "Grandpapa talks about my roses, and Captain Kittridge jokes me about growing so handsome; nobody seems to realize how I feel. I have kept up with all the strength I had. I have tried to shake it off, and to feel that nothing was the matter,—really there is nothing much, only this weakness. This morning I thought it would do me good to walk down here. I remember times when I could ramble whole days in the woods, but I was so tired before I got half way here that I had to stop a long while and rest. Aunt Roxy, if you would only tell grandpapa and grandmamma just how things are, and what the danger is, and let them stop talking to me about wedding things,—for really and truly I am too unwell to keep up any longer."
"Well, child, I will," said Miss Roxy. "Your grandfather will be supported, and hold you up, for he's one of the sort as has the secret of the Lord,—I remember him of old. Why, the day your father and mother was buried he stood up and sung old China, and his face was wonderful to see. He seemed to be standin' with the world under his feet and heaven opening. He's a master Christian, your grandfather is; and now you jest go and lie down in the little bedroom, and rest you a bit, and by and by, in the cool of the afternoon, I'll walk along home with you."
Miss Roxy opened the door of a little room, whose white fringy window-curtains were blown inward by breezes from the blue sea, and laid the child down to rest on a clean sweet-smelling bed with as deft and tender care as if she were not a bony, hard-visaged, angular female, in a black mohair frisette.
She stopped a moment wistfully before a little profile head, of a kind which resembles a black shadow on a white ground. "That was Hitty!" she said.
Mara had often seen in the graveyard a mound inscribed to this young person, and heard traditionally of a young and pretty sister of Miss Roxy who had died very many years before. But the grave was overgrown with blackberry-vines, and gray moss had grown into the crevices of the slab which served for a tombstone, and never before that day had she heard Miss Roxy speak of her. Miss Roxy took down the little black object and handed it to Mara. "You can't tell much by that, but she was a most beautiful creatur'. Well, it's all best as it is." Mara saw nothing but a little black shadow cast on white paper, yet she was affected by the perception how bright, how beautiful, was the image in the memory of that seemingly stern, commonplace woman, and how of all that in her mind's eye she saw and remembered, she could find no outward witness but this black block. "So some day my friends will speak of me as a distant shadow," she said, as with a sigh she turned her head on the pillow.