"Talking about minding your own business," continued Miss Betty, "in my experience it does not pay. I once saw Cousin Anne Gilpin looking at taffeta at Moseley's, and I knew as well as I knew my name that the piece she selected wouldn't wear. At first I thought I'd tell her; then I decided it was none of my business,—Cousin Anne was old enough to know about the quality of silk. And what do you think? She sent me a waist pattern off it for a Christmas gift!"
Celia laughed as she rose to go. "Thank you for the cake, even if it isn't a kindness. Mother will enjoy it," she said.
"You haven't noticed my hall paper," Miss Betty remarked, escorting her visitor to the door. "I don't expect you to say it is pretty, for it isn't. I have to confess wall paper is too much for me. This entry is so small I could not put anything big and bright on it, so I thought I was getting the very thing when I selected this,—and what does it look like? Nothing in the world but a clean calico dress. Now it is done I see it would have been better with plain paper."
"It is clean and unobtrusive," Celia agreed, smiling. Her smiles were a little forced this morning, it was easy to see; and Miss Betty, laying a kind hand on her arm, said, "Don't worry too much, Celia. I know something about hard times, and you will work through after a while."
Celia felt the tears rising, and she left Miss Betty with an abruptness that made her ashamed of herself as she recalled it. After the exertion of climbing the hill she stopped to rest on the rustic seat just inside her own gate. "I wonder," she asked herself, "if there is anything much harder to bear than seeing a house you love going to ruin and not to be able to save it."
A branch of the honeysuckle that twined about the gate-post touched her shoulder, as if to remind her there was still some sweetness in life after all; but she did not heed it, nor the rose vines and clematis which made the old gray house beautiful in spite of needed repairs. Celia saw only rotting woodwork and sagging steps. She thought how the flower garden had been her father's pride, and how in his spare moments, few as they were, he was sure to be found digging and trimming and training, with the happiness of the born gardener. Ah, those days! She remembered the half-incredulous wonder with which she had been used to hear people speak of the certainty of trouble. She had felt so certain that joy overbalanced sorrow, that smiles were more frequent than tears. Now she understood, since she had tried to hide her own grief under a smiling face.
From her babyhood she had been her father's companion and confidante, driving about the country with him, interested in all that concerned his large practice. A warm-hearted, impulsive man, open handed to the point of extravagance, Dr. Fair had had few enemies and many friends; and loving his work, life had been full of joy to him. In contrast with those happy years the bitterness of his last days seemed doubly cruel to Celia. Whenever she was tired and discouraged, the memory of that dark time rose before her.
She had been only a child when Patterson Whittredge left home, but she could remember how warmly her father had taken his side, and how this had caused the first coolness between him and his boyhood friend, Judge Whittredge. The judge was influenced by his wife, and between the stubborn doctor and imperious Mrs. Whittredge there had been no love lost.
The storm had passed after a while, and when the judge's health began to fail Dr. Fair had been called in. But Mrs. Whittredge had not forgotten, and the doctor's position was not an easy one. Only his devotion to his old friend had kept him from giving up the case at the beginning. The Gilpin will and her father's testimony to the old man's sanity had added to the trouble, and upon this had come the accusation which, whispered about, had broken the doctor's heart. Harassed by the hard times and the failure of investments, denied a place at the bedside of his friend, he had fallen an easy victim to pneumonia, outliving Judge Whittredge only a few days. The memory of it lay like lead upon Celia's heart.
"I have left you nothing but a heritage of misfortune, Celia," had been his last words to her.