Eunice

by Margaret M. Robertson

A great deal more was said about their plans, and about Mrs Stone, but not a word about Dr Justin Everett.

It was good to be at home again. A great many people, young and old, came to see Fidelia within the next three days. In the meantime Mrs Stone returned, and all necessary arrangements for the year were made between her and the sisters. Mrs Stone would have liked to rent the place or to buy it; but it was not to be thought of that the sisters should give up their home altogether, and so their plans were made for the year only.

Mrs Stone was a small dark-eyed woman, thin and brown, with deeper wrinkles between her eyes than her forty years should have shown. When she sat with her eyes cast down on her work, and her lips firmly shut, one who did not know her well might be excused for saying that she looked “hard.” But when she looked up, and spoke, or smiled, her face changed. She had a good and pleasant face, with some signs of trouble upon it.

Her married life had been a time of discipline to her, she owned to Eunice, when they first met, and to her she spoke of the troubles of the time; but she spoke to no one else of it. She was capable and active, and did what was to be done in the house with such evident pleasure and success that the housekeeping gradually fell into her hands, and Fidelia had more liberty than ever she had at home before. And she made a good use of her liberty. She had preparations for next year to make, and friends to visit, and began to feel more light-hearted—more like herself—than she had done for a good while.

There was much going on to make the time pass pleasantly. Nellie Austin and her brother Amos were visiting the Everetts; and in whatever was planned for their pleasure and the pleasure of the household Fidelia had a share. There were fishing parties and berrying expeditions; and they went sometimes to the woods, or to visit some mountain or waterfall, or chasm among the hills.

Dr Everett himself, when one of his rare days of leisure came, liked nothing better than to go with the young folks; and it was a day to be marked with a white stone when he could make one of the party. Dr Justin had more leisure, and could go oftener. Dr Everett was as merry and as eager for adventures as any of them. Dr Justin was quiet, and took the place of a looker-on rather than a sharer in the amusements of the young people. Privately some of them were inclined to think him something of a tyrant, for he kept them in order, and did not hesitate to assume and exercise authority when occasion called for it, nor to reprove—and that with sufficient emphasis—any of them who through thoughtlessness or selfishness interfered with the pleasure of the rest. But this did not often happen, and he was a favourite among them all.

Fidelia came to like Dr Justin better than at Eastwood she would have supposed possible. She went very often with the rest of the young people, and no one of them all enjoyed the delights of woods and fields and mountains more than she. Nellie Austin declared that she hardly recognised in her the dull, determined student of the first part of the year. She was light-hearted and happy; and she told Nellie, and herself as well, that she had good cause.

Eunice was well, and every day made it more clear to them that they had made no mistake in deciding to share their home with Mrs Stone. And then she was going back to the seminary and her beloved studies again.

Yes, Eunice was very well—“for her,” Fidelia sometimes added with a sigh, which meant that Eunice might never be altogether well and strong again. But she was happy—there could be no doubt about that. Dr Justin came sometimes as a visitor to the house, quiet and grave there as elsewhere; and his quietness and gravity was the reason that Fidelia liked him better than she had liked him at Eastwood, she told herself. Nothing could be more evident than that he exerted no disturbing influence on Eunice. They were friendly—they were even confidential, Fidelia sometimes thought. But she never spoke of Dr Justin to her sister, except as his name came in the account which Eunice always liked to hear of the expeditions in which she could take no part; and she day by day grew less afraid lest her sister might have something to tell her of him that she would not like to hear.

But she liked Mr Justin, she owned to herself; and after awhile she began to see that, though he had less to say to her than to Nellie and the rest, he was not less mindful of her than of them—that though he amused himself with them, and submitted to be teased by them, and even condescended to tease them in return, he had only grave respectful words for her, and indeed carried himself towards her as though he thought she might not care for friendly advances on his part; but he was always careful for her safety and comfort, and one day he told her why.