Eunice Marsh might well say that the first seventeen years of her life had been happy years. Her father, a man useful and much beloved, had during that time been minister of the only church in Hopeville, a town in the southern part of the state. She had lost her mother when she was a little child, but her loss had been well supplied by the love and care of her mother’s mother, with whom she had lived, in the house that was now her home, till the time of her father’s second marriage.
Her new mother did not love her own little daughter, when she came, more dearly than she loved Eunice, and so the happy years moved on to a sorrowful ending. Suddenly, in the midst of happiness and usefulness, with no warning which those who loved him could understand, the minister died. Then Eunice returned to her grandparents home on the hill, and her stepmother, with her little daughter, came there also, to stay for a little while; and they never went away again.
It was not a very large house, and the old people were far from being rich, but they offered the widow a home while she needed one. She did not need it long. She never quite recovered from the shock of her husband’s death, and she died within the year, leaving her little girl to her sister Eunice, “to love and care for always—to be her very own.”
“And, dear, I am not afraid to leave my little darling with you,” said the dying mother with a smile.
After a while happy days came again to Eunice. Why should she not be happy? Those who had gone from her had only “gone before,” and those who remained were very dear; and life was before her—a mystery!—but a mystery of gladness and blessing, as she believed.
Dr Everett had been the minister’s classmate in college, and his life-long friend; and when the minister died, he became the guardian and the life-long friend of his daughters. In his house they found a second home, and from him Eunice had the counsel and the guidance which in their old age, and with their failing powers, her grandparents could no longer give her.
Strong, eager, ambitious, it would have pleased the girl well to be allowed to choose her own lot and work, and to make her own way in the world. But she was dutiful, and she loved her little sister dearly, and so she was willing to be restrained and guided, and to give herself to work which seemed at first very humble work, which almost any one might do, but which was God-given work—a blessing to others and to herself, as time went on.
Happy? Looking back over those first years, Eunice told herself that no one could have been happier than she was then. Yes, and afterwards also. For that which made much of the happiness was not taken from her at a single blow, nor was she called upon to choose between her duty and her happiness all at once. She knew there was no choice for her.
When Justin Everett, the doctor’s youngest brother—and, like him, a physician—saw his way open to go West to an uncle, to establish himself with him in his profession, Eunice might have gone with him as his wife, if circumstances at home had been different. But it was impossible. There was no choice to be made, and nothing to be said.
Her grandfather had been stricken helpless, with little hope of ever being otherwise than helpless. Over her grandmother, younger than him by many years, hung an awful dread. She too must die, but she might be years in dying. Some one would have to watch by her dying bed, as she in her youth had watched by the dying bed of her own mother, till the slow months wore on to years, before her tired eyes closed at last in painless rest.