"Forget you, Willie! I shall be always thinking of you, and loving you the same as ever. What else shall I have to do? But you will be off in a strange country, where everything will be different, and you will not think half as much of me, I know."
"If you believe that, Gertrude, it is because you do not know. You will have friends all around you and I shall be alone in a foreign land; but every day of my life my heart will be with you and my mother."
They were now interrupted by Mr. Cooper's return, nor did they afterwards renew the conversation; but the morning Willie left them, when Mrs. Sullivan was leaning over a neatly-packed trunk in the next room, trying to hide her tears, and Mr. Cooper's head was bowed lower than usual, Willie whispered to Gerty, "Gerty, dear, for my sake take good care of our mother and grandfather—they are yours almost as much as mine."
On Willie's thus leaving home, for the first time, to struggle and strive among men, Mr. Cooper, who could not yet believe that the boy would be successful in the war with fortune, gave him many a caution against indulgent hopes which never would be realised. And Mrs. Sullivan, with tears, said, "Love and fear God, Willie, and do not disappoint your mother." We pause not to dwell upon the last night the youth spent at his home, his mother's last evening prayer, her last morning benediction, the last breakfast they all took together (Gertrude among the rest), or the final farewell embrace. And Willie went to sea. And the pious, loving, hopeful woman, who for eighteen years had cherished her boy with tenderness and pride, maintained now her wonted spirit of self-sacrifice, and gave him up without a murmur. None knew how she struggled with her aching heart, or whence came the power that sustained her.
And now began Gertrude's residence at Mr. Graham's, hitherto in various ways interrupted. She attended school, and laboured diligently at her studies. Her life was varied by few incidents, for Emily never entertained much company, and in the winter scarcely any, and Gertrude formed no intimate acquaintance among her companions. With Emily she passed many happy hours; they took walks, read books, and talked much with each other, and Miss Graham found that in Gertrude's observing eyes, and her feeling and glowing descriptions of everything that came within their gaze, she was herself renewing her acquaintance with the outer world. In errands of charity and mercy Gertude was either her attendant or her messenger; and all the dependants of the family, from the cook to the little boy who called at the door for the fragments of broken bread, agreed in loving and praising the child, who, though neither beautiful nor elegantly dressed, had a fairy lightness of step, a grace of movement, and a dignity of bearing which impressed them all with the conviction that she was no beggar in spirit, whatever might be her birth or fortune. Mrs. Ellis's prejudices against her was still strong; but, as Gertrude was always civil, and Emily prudently kept them much apart, no unhappy result ensued.
She went often to see Mrs. Sullivan, and, as the spring advanced, they began to look for news of Willie. No tidings had come, however, when the season arrived for the Grahams to remove into the country for the summer. A letter written by Gertrude to Willie, soon after they were established there, will give some idea of her situation and mode of life.
After dwelling upon the disappointment of having not yet heard from him, and giving an account of the last visit she had made to his mother before leaving the city, she wrote: "But you made me promise, Willie, to write about myself, and said you should wish to hear everything that occurred at Mr. Graham's which concerned me in anyway; so if my letter is more tedious than usual, it is your own fault, for I have much to tell of our removal to D——, and of the way in which we live here, so different from our life in Boston. I think I hear you say, when you have read so far, 'O dear! now Gerty is going to give me a description of Mr. Graham's country-house!'—but you need not be afraid; I have not forgotten how, the last time I undertook to do so, you placed your hand over my mouth to stop me, and assured me you knew the place as well as if you had lived there all your life, for I oft described it to you. Everything looks smaller and less beautiful than it seemed to me then; and, though I will not describe it to you again, I must just tell you that the entry and piazzas are much narrower than I expected, the rooms lower, and the garden and summer-houses not nearly so large. Miss Emily asked me, a day or two ago, how I liked the place, and if it looked as it used formerly. I told her the truth; and she was not at all displeased, but laughed at my old recollections of the house and grounds, and said it was always so with things we had seen when we were little children.
"I need not tell you that Miss Emily is kind to me as ever; for nobody who knows her as you do would suppose she could ever be anything but the best and loveliest person in the world. I can never do half enough, Willie, to repay her for all her goodness to me; and yet, she is so pleased with little gifts, and so grateful for trifling attentions, that it seems as if everybody might do something to make her happy. I found a few violets in the grass yesterday, and when I brought them to her she kissed and thanked me as if they had been so many diamonds; and little Ben Gately, who picked a hatful of dandelion-blossoms, without a single stem, and then rang at the front-door bell, and asked for Miss Ga'am, so as to give them to her himself, got a sweet smile for his trouble, and a 'thank you, Bennie,' that he will not soon forget. Wasn't it pleasant in Miss Emily, Willie?
"Mr. Graham has given me a garden, and I mean to have plenty of flowers for her by-and-by—that is, if Mrs. Ellis doesn't interfere; but I expect she will, for she does in almost everything. Willie, Mrs. Ellis is my great trial. She is just the kind of person I cannot endure. I believe there are some people that other people can't like—and she is just the sort I can't. I would not tell anybody else so, because it would not be right, and I do not know that it is right to mention it at all; but I always tell you everything. Miss Emily talks to me about her, and says I must learn to love her, and when I do I shall be an angel.
"There, I know you will think that is some of Gerty's old temper; and perhaps it is, but you don't know how she tries me; it is in little things that I cannot tell very easily, and I would not plague you with them if I could, so I won't write about her any more—I will try to love her dearly.