"Matilda has been one sister in ten thousand and she's asked precious little. Caroline got things quite naturally while she lived at home—'Tilda took the leavings always and patched, somehow, a thankful, beautiful life out of them. She's going to get whole pieces of cloth from now——" he muttered, "with Sandy thrown in."
CHAPTER XVII
Perhaps it was the spring air; perhaps it was the turn in the tide of Cynthia Walden's life, but whatever it was it roused her and gripped her from early morning. At six o'clock on that May day she awoke in her shabby room of Stoneledge and looked out of the vine-covered window, heard a bird sing a wild, delicious little song, and then sat up with the strange thrill of happiness flooding her heart and soul.
It was a warm morning, more like late June than late May, and both the bird and the girl felt the joy in the promise of summer.
At nineteen Cynthia, like the spring morn, bore the mark of her coming fulfillment of beauty. She was very lovely, tall, slim, slightly bending, like a reed that had bowed to the wind instead of resisting. The child look, full of question and waiting, was still in her clear blue-gray eyes; the well-formed mouth had not forgotten its pretty, slow smile, and the pale, exquisite whiteness of the smooth skin was touched with a delicate tan and colour that did credit totally Taber's care and culinary art.
"I feel," whispered the girl, tossing the braids of her smooth gold-brown hair back from her face; "I declare I feel as if something was going to happen long o' me!"
Not for a moment did Cynthia imagine anything ill. Out of a barren, isolated life she had evolved and held to the strict philosophy she had once confided to Marcia Lowe in the little church. If trouble overtook her, she shielded herself as well as possible, smiled pleadingly and stepped aside. At such courtesy Trouble had obligingly gone on leaving the girl of nineteen as trusting and hopeful as a child. The old house had crumbled and tottered. Ann Walden had sunk into positive imbecility—but Cynthia had kept her faith and love. Sally Taber still ruled the Great House under the disguise of grateful dependent. She slept in the loft over the kitchen, made life a possible thing for a helpless woman and a young girl, and asked nothing for herself in return.
"If that woman doesn't have a crown studded two deep with jewels some day," Marcia Lowe confided to Tod Greeley, "I'll miss my guess."
And Tod, for various reasons, did what he could to show his appreciation of the old woman's nobility.