“It amuses me very much to hear Arthur say I am changed,” said Rose, one day, when the sisters were sitting together. “Why, if I had come home a strong-minded woman and the president of a convention, it would have been nothing to the change that has taken place in Fanny, which I daresay he does not see at all, as a change; he always was rather blind where she was concerned. But what have you being doing to Fanny, Graeme?”
“Rose, my dear,” said Graeme, gravely, “Fanny has had a great deal of sickness and suffering, and her change is for the better, I am sure; and, besides, are you not speaking a little foolishly?”
“Well, perhaps so, but not unkindly, as far as Fanny is concerned. For the better! I should think so. But then I fancied that Fanny was just the one to grow peevish in sickness, and ill to do with, as Janet would say; and I confess, when I heard of the arrival of young Arthur, I was afraid, remembering old times, and her little airs, that she might not be easier to live with.”
“Now, Rosie, that is not quite kind.”
“But it is quite true. That is just what I thought first, and what I said to Norman. I know you said how nice she was, and how sweet, and all that, but I thought that was just your way of seeing things; you never would see Fanny’s faults, you know, even at the very first.”
Graeme shook her head.
“I think you must have forgotten about the very first. We were both foolish and faithless, then. It has all come right; Arthur is very happy in his wife, though I never thought it could be in those days.”
There was a long pause after that, and then Rose said,—
“You must have had a very anxious time, and a great deal to do, when she was so long ill that first winter. I ought to have been here to help you, and I should have been, if I had known.”
“I wished for you often, but I did not have too much to do, or to endure. I am none the worse for it all.”