“We have come to carry you home with us to see Aunt Louisa,” continued Lizzie. “She asked after you the first thing this morning, and the doctor said as she grew stronger to-day it would do her real good to have a visit from you.”
“Then, if Mr. W—— can spare me, I certainly cannot refuse to go,” said Hattie, with a smile.
“You certainly can be spared for such a purpose, Miss Hattie,” said Mr. W——. “Your time could not be better spent than in comforting those who need comfort.”
Hattie saw the hidden meaning of those words, and she would have comforted him had it been in her power. But she had made a decision in his case which she could not change.
Mr. W—— now escorted his visitors and Hattie down stairs to the carriage which waited, and when the two girls sat side by side there, one resplendent in silk, laces, and diamonds—the other in her ever neat, well-fitting and well-made shop dress of ten-cent calico, without an ornament of any kind, he compared them in his mind, and his heart still told him the shop-girl, beautiful, but poor, was superior to all others in the world—his heart’s first and last choice above all others.
And he stood there and watched them and the carriage till it turned the corner, and then he went back, with a weary sigh, to his business.
As the carriage rattled on over the paved streets, so Lizzie’s tongue rattled, too, while Frank’s eyes only were busy studying out the marvelous beauty of the girl to whom his sister talked.
“Do you know, dear Hattie,” said she, “that I believe we are to be cousins—real cousins. For if Aunt Louisa adopts you as her daughter you will be my cousin—my dear, dear cousin, will you not?”
“I fear I shall never be more than a dear and true friend to you, Miss Lizzie,” said Hattie, kindly, yet gravely. “Your aunt, perhaps, wishes to be as good to me as you indicate, but I can never yield to her kind desire.”
“But, Hattie, darling, you don’t know her yet. She is so good! Never did a kinder heart throb than hers. She is the counterpart of my blessed mother, who died on earth but lives in Heaven. She has seen many sorrows—we know not all, for she was abroad with her first husband for years, and we heard he was a bad man. She married him against the will of her parents and friends, but her last husband, whom she married because they all wanted her to after the first one died, was a very good man, and he left her over a million of dollars in her own right. We never talk with her about her first marriage. She does not like it. But she often speaks of Mr. Emory herself, and his praise never hurts her feelings. We all liked him very much.”