“I feel, through my tears, that it is better so, for she will bind me closer to Heaven when I think that she, in her purity, awaits me there.
“Hoping to see you very soon, I am
“Your loving Flossy.
“P.S.—Bronson seems to feel the baby’s death to a truly astonishing degree. F. H.”
I flung the note across to Rachel, and, putting my head down on my two arms, I cried just as hard as I could cry.
Rachel read it, then tore it into twenty bits, and ground her heel into the fragments.
“Why, Rachel Percival! what is the matter?”
“She wasn’t even at home. She was at church. She must have been. She told me that Bronson was afraid to have her leave the baby, and wouldn’t come himself, but that she didn’t think anything was the matter with it, and wouldn’t be tied down. Then such a note so soon afterwards! Ruth, what is that woman made of?”
We went together to Flossy’s. She came across the room to meet us, supported by Bronson. She stumbled two or three times in the attempt. Tears were running down Bronson’s face, and he wiped them away quite humbly, as if he did not mind our seeing them in the least. I could not bear to watch him, so I slipped out of the room and went upstairs.
“In here, ’m,” said the nurse; “and Miss Rachel is here too. She won’t move that far from the cradle, and she hasn’t shed a tear.”