“How happy I was when I gave the picture to him; no shadow obscured the fair horizon of my life; but time will change all things; babes will grow to be men and women, and soon will grow to old age if God spares them to this world of sorrow. I for one have borne many trials. Whenever cast down, the thought will ever arise, ‘God doeth all things well.’ How strange it is that a stranger should have a picture given to a friend twenty-five years ago,” said the lady in meditation.
“Madam, it is strange, very strange indeed. It is a mystery. My father supposed you dead and in time married my mother. Yet one of my servants told me my father loved the picture so much that when he was told it was burned up he went away and never has been heard of since. He left home when I was a babe on my mother’s breast. I am going to find him if he is alive,” said the young man vehemently.
“I must find him if he is in the land of the living.”
He bent over the couch where Nettie lay listening to her mother’s and lover’s passionate words and she said, “My little love, your mother thinks she had been deceived by my poor father, and now his son is trying to deceive her only child. I am going away, and when I find my father or hear something definite about him then I will return. All I ask is to prove faithful to me until I return.”
He pressed a kiss on her fair brow as he said, “God bless and keep you both until I return.”
In a moment the door closed on the manly form of Paul Burton.
He went directly to the hotel where he was stopping and packing his little wardrobe prepared to travel.
He thought of going to England but decided he would first go to the pleasure seekers’ sea-side resorts.
Days and weeks went slowly by to the ones left in the cottage. At last it was nearly Christmas; the inmates were looking out of the window at the people hurrying along the thoroughfare. Presently the mother said, “Nettie, I wonder if anyone thinks enough of us to give us something. Our little money is nearly gone and what we have we cannot spare for niceties as it is all we have to keep the wolf from the door.”
“God will provide for us,” answered Nettie.