Huldah, standing by the grave-side while the beautiful words of the Burial Service were being read, thought of those other partings, so sad, so cruel,—oh, this was better than those, and not so complete. She could still feel that Aunt Emma was near her, and safe, and in the best of all keeping, at peace for ever and ever.
They thought it best that Huldah should not go back to the empty rooms again, and she was glad; so after the service was over she walked back to her old home once again, as though she had never left it, and the last few months had been but a dream. And it was all so like a dream that at the top of the lane she paused and looked about her, half bewildered. Could she be, she asked herself, the same Huldah who not so many months before had stood there a cowed, frightened, hunted thing, starving, exhausted, but minding nothing as long as—as what?
As long as she escaped from the two she had so lately parted with, with such an aching heart. She looked down over her black frock. She felt the sadness in her heart, the sense of loss. Could such changes really have come about, that now she was full of grief that she could never again see or hear the aunt she had so feared?
"Come home, dear; come home. I want you too, oh so badly!"
Aunt Martha's voice broke in on her thoughts, and brought her quickly back to the present. Aunt Martha's face was white and tired with cold and weariness. Huldah was filled with repentance.
"Oh, you're tired," she cried, remorsefully, "and chilled, and I'm keeping you standing here. Oh, Aunt Martha, I hope you haven't taken cold. We'll hurry now, and I'll make you a good fire, and some tea, and—and I am going to take care of you now, auntie, all the rest of my days, till I'm an old, old woman, and I'll never go and leave you any more, for it's plain to see, looking up at her half mischievously, you can't take care of yourself without me."
So, for the third time Huldah came back to Woodend Lane, and to Dick, who went nearly crazy with joy, and to the chickens, and garden and her basket-making; and this time she stayed, if not till she was an old woman, at any rate until someone big and strong and very fond of her, came and built a new cottage, to join Mrs. Perry's old one, and a new fowl's house on to the old one which Dick had guarded so well, that he earned for his little mistress and himself a home and friends for ever. And even then one could scarcely call it "leaving," for presently the wall which divided them was knocked down, and the two cottages were made one.
Huldah's basket-making business increased and increased, until at last she had to teach another little girl, that she might come and help her, and then another and another; and perhaps the proudest moment of her life was when she was able to buy the cottage she loved so much, and present it to her dearly-loved 'Aunt Martha' as a Christmas gift.
By that time Huldah, the little waif, who had earned for herself the name of "the Brownie," had made for herself so many friends, that when her wedding took place, so many wished to attend it, they had to borrow the field opposite for the wedding-feast. And where she had once sat and worked and dreamed of the future, there she sat now flushed, smiling and happy, cutting the wedding cake which old Dinah, with great pride, had made in the vicarage kitchen.
There she sat, with Dick close beside her, his old heart somewhat sad with fear of another parting, Aunt Martha opposite, divided between smiles and tears, and beside her her husband, who was not going to divide them, but bind them more securely together; and last, but not least, on Huldah's other hand sat Miss Rose,—no longer "Miss," but always "Miss Rose" to everyone in Woodend,—who, if Huldah had been the "brownie," had proved herself the fairy godmother, the best of guides and friends to those two who had strayed into her life that hot summer's morning years ago—those two poor loving, hungry, friendless waifs,—Dick and the Brownie.