Janet's Love and Service

by Margaret M. Robertson

Chapter Four.

It was worship time, and the bairns had gathered round the table with their books, to wait for their father’s coming. It was a fair sight to see, but it was a sad one too, for they were motherless. It was all the more sad, that the bright faces and gay voices told how little they realised the greatness of the loss they had sustained. They were more gay than usual, for the elder brother had come home for the summer, perhaps for always; for the question was being eagerly discussed whether he would go back to the college again, or whether he was to go with the rest to America.

Arthur, a quiet, handsome lad of sixteen, said little. He was sitting with the sleepy Will upon his knee, and only put in a word now and then, when the others grew too loud and eager. He could have set them at rest about it; for he knew that his father had decided to leave him in Scotland till his studies were finished at the college.

“But there’s no use to vex the lads and Graeme to-night,” he said to himself; and he was right, as he had not quite made up his mind whether he was vexed himself or not. The thought of the great countries on the other side of the globe, and of the possible adventures that might await them there, had charms for him, as for every one of his age and spirit. But he was a sensible lad, and realised in some measure the advantage of such an education as could only be secured by remaining behind, and he knew in his heart that there was reason in what his father had said to him of the danger there was that the voyage and the new scenes in a strange land might unsettle his mind from his books. It cost him something to seem content, even while his father was speaking to him, and he knew well it would grieve the rest to know he was to be left behind, so he would say nothing about it, on this first night of his home-coming.

There was one sad face among them; for even Arthur’s home-coming could not quite chase the shadow that had fallen on Graeme since the night a year ago while she sat dreaming her dreams in the firelight. It was only a year or little more, but it might have been three, judging from the change in her. She was taller and paler, and older-looking since then. And yet it was not so much that as something else that so changed her, Arthur thought, as he sat watching her. The change had come to her through their great loss, he knew; but he could not have understood, even if it had been told him, how much this had changed life to Graeme. He had suffered too more than words could ever tell. Many a time his heart had been ready to burst with unspeakable longing for his dead mother’s loving presence, her voice, her smile, her gentle chiding, till he could only cast himself down and weep vain tears upon the ground.

Graeme had borne all this, and what was worse to her, the hourly missing of her mother’s counsel and care. Not one day of all the year but she had been made to feel the bitterness of their loss; not one day but she had striven to fill her mother’s place to her father and them all, and her nightly heartbreak had been to know that she had striven in vain. “As how could it be otherwise than vain,” she said often to herself, “so weak, so foolish, so impatient.” And yet through all her weakness and impatience, she knew that she must never cease to try to fill her mother’s place still.

Some thought of all this came into Arthur’s mind, as she sat there leaning her head on one hand, while the other touched from time to time the cradle at her side. Never before had he realised how sad it was for them all that they had lost their mother, and how dreary life at home must have been all the year.

“Poor Graeme! and poor wee Rosie!” he says to himself, stooping over the cradle.

“How old is Rosie?” asked he, suddenly.

“Near three years old,” said Janet.