“I guess I couldn’t hardly do that, Mrs. Lorraine, for Anna might take it to heart,” he said. “And you see we was without our daughter for five years.”
“And consider what it means to Mr. Langley to have her go!” cried Miss Penny. “O Mrs. Lorraine, if you could know what store we set by that man—though I suppose you begin to guess by now. But you may not know how we all long to do something for him—to show our appreciation—or perhaps to satisfy our own hearts—and it’s so difficult—it’s next to impossible. And she his wife, you know. If she should come out among people, he would be the happiest man alive.”
“I fear she never will, Miss Penny,” Mrs. Lorraine returned doubtfully. “She has been shut in too long. People like that grow selfish and exacting. She will never be willing to make the effort it would require to receive other people so long as she can have Anna, who just suits her. She’ll cling to her and I fear will devour her youth.”
The phrase impressed Seth Miller deeply. He repeated it more than once as he walked across with his lantern, sighing deeply with each repetition, though he had really been cheered by the promise the ladies had given him to consider the problem carefully.
He was amazed to find Anna, wrapped in a woollen dressing-gown, sitting by the kitchen stove with her mother and the boys. She had regained her colour and seemed herself again. As she shook back her short yellow locks, her father thought she looked like a posy swayed by the wind.
“O pa, what do you think! Here’s a note from Mrs. Langley!” she cried. “I thought she’d be so mad after yesterday that she’d never want to see me again, but here she is begging to see me soon because she has something special to speak about. Mr. Langley will come for me and bring me back, she says, if I’ll come some night after school. Here it is—sort of funny writing, isn’t it?”
As it never occurred to the other Miller girl to wait until she was stronger, she hurried over to the parsonage Monday afternoon. And her heart leaped with generous emotion when Mrs. Langley’s first question was for the baby.
“Joe’s right as rain, bless his heart, Mrs. Langley,” she returned cheerfully. “Pa says it did him good to expand his lungs. You understand how it was, didn’t you?”
Mrs. Langley evaded the question by asking another: “Who’s with him now?”
“Ma’s right there and the boys are minding him. You see,—I—I wanted to bring him with me so badly that I’m afraid I didn’t try as I might have to get him taken care of. And anyhow the boys are getting better. What do you suppose? They took the pennies they have been saving for Christmas and sent over to Wenham by Walter Phelps and got him a perfectly scrumptious linen picture book with an animal for every blooming letter of the alphabet. They’re perfectly dotty over teaching him to talk. Freddy thinks it will be easier now that he knows how to cry!”