“Yes, we will, Mary Jay,” said the girls; “we certainly will.”
So Mary Jay held out her hand to the girls. For a minute or two, she looked upon them with a smile, as one after another came forward to shake it; but then she turned her head away, and, leaning upon a round stone at one side of her seat, she hid her face in her handkerchief, which she held in her left hand. Marielle lingered till the last, and then she kneeled down upon the step of the seat beside her, kissed her cheek, and said, in a very gentle tone,—
“Good by, dear Mary Jay.”
She then paused, and looked at her with a sad expression of countenance. Her dark hair, lying in curls upon her neck, was very beautiful. But Marielle was not admiring her beauty; she was pitying her sorrow.
CHAPTER VII.
MARY JAY’S SUNDAY SCHOOL.
Mary Jay lived at some distance from any church, and so it was very seldom that she was able to go to church; for she could not walk very far. But it happened that, at a short distance from the house where she lived, there was a small red school-house, at the edge of a grove of pine-trees, on the bank of a river; and Mary Jay used to go there every Sabbath day, to keep a Sabbath school for the little children that lived near.
The next Sabbath after the gypsy supper, Mary Jay was going to close her school. Marielle wanted to go very much; and she proposed to Lucy that they should both ask their mothers to allow them to go, instead of going to church. Lucy said that she was willing.
So they both asked their mothers, and they said yes. Royal wanted to go too, but his father thought that it was not best. So Marielle and Lucy set off alone. They were going to call at Mary Jay’s house, a little before the time, and so walk along to the school-house with her.
They found Mary Jay all ready for them, sitting in a chair, upon the door step. She had her bonnet on, and she was reading. One crutch was leaning against the post of the door. When she saw the two little girls coming, she shut her book, rose, and took her crutch under her arm.