"How can I shrink from leaving my dear ones with my heavenly Father, when I know how he pities his afflicted children? and when I remember how many earnest prayers for them are registered in heaven."
Soon after her death Edward was sent to school to prepare for college; and it was only during his vacations that he had returned to Rose Cottage, where Gertrude in the care of their faithful Hannah still resided.
[CHAPTER II.]
GOING HOME.
THE last day of the last term had come; and gone. Paul Dudley with Edward Wallingford were candidates for the bar. Paul had chosen the new and flourishing city of Chicago as the field in which he was to become famous, while Edward had decided to return to his native place. The thought of the separation which their new lives involved, was painful to both. Six years of the closest intimacy had united their hearts in an uncommon degree. Paul's love to Edward was mingled so largely with respect, that during all their intercourse he had been conscious of a desire to keep his own bad qualities out of sight, lest they should excite contempt.
Edward, though the younger by a year, had come gradually to regard his chum as a charge; one who must be encouraged and assisted to do right. This very care, had greatly enhanced his affection.
Since he entered college, it had been Wallingford's habit to return to Rose Cottage twice a year; spending at least part of his vacations there; but now fully twelve months had elapsed since his last visit. One short recess he had passed with Paul in Philadelphia, while the long vacation was occupied by a pedestrian excursion, long talked of, to Niagara and the Canadas. Now that their examination had passed successfully, Paul gladly complied with his friend's invitation to spend one month together at Rose Cottage before they commenced their battle with the world.
Edward had often spoken to Paul of his anxieties concerning his sister; and his fear lest she were growing up under the care of Hannah, in a state of semi-barbarism. He complained of her want of interest in her books; the perfect wildness and ignorance of the most common customs of society, which had characterized her at their last interview.
Paul remembered having seen a picture of the little sprite in the earlier days of his acquaintance with his friend; and he must be pardoned if he judged from her juvenile scrawls, denominated letters, of the same period, that she had been, indeed, sadly neglected.
After they had taken their seats in the cars which were to convey them to Wallingford's home, the young lawyer's heart sank as he reflected on his mother's parting injunction; and realized how sadly he had neglected his duty to the sister left in his care.