"Very likely he can," Uncle Jack answered, "but my experience doesn't prove it; for I began to be glad, very soon indeed, that Nelly was only my adopted sister, after all. It was a good while before I got my courage up to ask her whether she would trust herself to me on the long home stretch through life. Be sure that I promised her, if she would, that I'd never leave her in any dark places."
"And what did she say?"
"Oh! I mustn't tell her secrets. Go and ask her. There she comes, with her first grandchild in her arms. Her cheeks are not bright now, she says, but somehow they look to me just as they used to look; and I know her eyes are as dark and deep as ever; and though I call her 'mother,' with the rest of you, when you are all round, there is never a night that I don't say to her, before she goes to sleep, 'God bless you, Nelly!'"
NOBODY'S CHILD.
The summer sun was warm in the five-acre lot, and the east porch was cool and pleasant, so the owner of the lot lingered in the porch and talked awhile with his wife. He had married her only the April before, and to live with her and love her had not yet grown to be an old story. It would be her fault if it ever did grow to be one; for he was a tender, kindly man, this Marcus Grant, with a gentle and clinging nature, and a womanly need of loving.
His wife, though she was young and pretty, with bright eyes, and bright lips, and soft, waving hair, was harder than he, and colder, and more selfish. But she had given him all the heart she had, and in these early days she cared very much indeed about pleasing him, and keeping him satisfied with her; or, rather, making him continue to admire her, for quiet satisfaction on his part would not have been enough.
He had thrown himself down on the door-stone, and his head was leaning against her lap, as she sat on her low chair in the porch, and ran her fingers in and out of his thick chestnut hair, thinking to herself what a fortunate woman she was to be the wife of this manly, handsome fellow, whom so many girls wanted, and the mistress of his well-filled, comfortable house.