It is summer again—“the leafy month of June”—and in the spacious, well-kept grounds of Richard Howland hundreds of roses are blossoming, but none so fair and beautiful to the owner of these grounds as the rose which blossoms within the house—the brighthaired, gentle Alice, who, when the grief-laden clouds of adversity were overshadowing her life, did not dream that she could ever be as happy as she is in her new home. The grass-grown grave in the quiet valley is not neglected, nor he who rests there forgotten, but though her tears fall often on the sod, she cannot wish the blind man back in a world which was so truly dark to him.
And Alice has learned to be happy in her luxurious home—happy in the tender love which Miss Elinor ever lavishes upon her, and happy, too, in the quiet brother-like affection of him who seems to her the embodiment of every manly virtue. He does not talk often with her, for Richard Howland deals not so much in words as deeds, but in a thousand little ways he tells her he is glad to have her there. And this is all he tells her, so that neither she nor his more discerning sister dream how sweet to him is the music of the childish voice, which often in the gathering twilight sings some song of the olden time; nor do they know, when returning home at night, how wistfully he glances toward the window where Alice is wont to sit, and if they did know it, they could not fathom his meaning, for when the golden hair and bright young face is there, he always turns aside, lingering without, as if within there were no maiden fair, whose eyes of blue played wilder notes upon his heart-strings than the dark, proud orbs of Adelaide had ever done. Even he does not know he loves her, so quietly that love has come—creeping over him while he slept—stealing over him when he woke—whispering to him in the dingy counting-room, and bidding him cast frequent glances at the western sky, to see if it were not time that he were home. He only knows that he is very happy, and that his happiness is in some way connected with the childish form which flits before him like a sunbeam, filling his home with light and joy. It had never occurred to him that she might sometime go away, and leave in his household a void which no other one could fill, and when one day, toward the last of June, his sister said to him, “Alice has received a letter from an old friend of her mother, asking her to take charge of the juvenile department of a young ladies’ seminary in B——,” he started as if he had been smitten with a heavy blow.
“Alice teach school!” he exclaimed. “Alice go away from—me—from you, I mean. Preposterous! She don’t, of course, think of accepting the offer?”
“Yes, she does. I’d no idea she had so much decision,” and Miss Elinor’s scissors cut quite a hole in the embroidery on which she has worked ever since we knew her. “I remonstrated when she told me she should return an affirmative answer, but it did no good. She never intended long to burden people on whom she had no claim, she said. She would rather be independent, and though she was very happy here, she felt it her duty to earn her own living, now that an opportunity was presented.”
“Earn her own living,” repeated Mr. Howland, “just as though she cost anybody anything. There is some other reason, and if I didn’t know you as well as I do, I should be inclined to think the fault was with you. Maybe you do sometimes scold her, Elinor?” and he fixed his eyes inquiringly upon his sister’s face.
Miss Elinor had striven hard to restrain the tears which thoughts of parting with her favorite induced, and thus far she had succeeded, but when she heard her brother’s remark, they burst forth at once.
“Me scold Alice?” was all she could articulate, as with a deeply injured air she left the room, while her brother, seizing his hat, hurried off to the store, where he remained the entire day, trying to think how it would seem to him when he knew that Alice was gone.
It didn’t seem at all, either to him or to his clerks, for never before had he been so irritable and cross, finding fault with the most trivial matters; chiding the cash-boy for moving too fast, and the head clerk for moving too slow; refusing to trust the widow Simpson, whom he had trusted all his life, and making himself so generally disagreeable that the young men in his employ were not sorry when, about five o’clock, they saw him start for home.
“I’m glad he’s gone, anyway, dern him!” muttered Check, who had been, perhaps, the greatest sufferer, and with a most contemptuous whistle he looked after the retreating figure of his master.