“She cried and has put flowers on his grave every Sunday since,” was Fan’s answer, and Carl continued: “Yes, she knows, and she is sorry,—more sorry than you think. Mother is a good woman, who means to do right, but, unfortunately, her ideas run in a groove too narrow and deep for her to get them out easily. She is Puritanical all through,—great, great, great and double great something of Miles Standish and the Mayflower. I don’t care a fig for either, but I love my mother, and I want you to love her, too. It will be better all round. She is quick to reciprocate, and isn’t a bad sort by a long shot,—a little stiff, that’s all; and if she didn’t own up about Paul, it was a kind of pride which kept her silent. If you told the Aunt Martha part with half the vim you told it to me, she could have no doubt of your opinion of her, and it required a good deal of pluck for her to say ‘I am that woman.’ But she will do it. She’ll tell me Paul is here, and she’ll tell you that she is Aunt Martha, and propose a big monument for Paul and Charlie.”
“No, no,” Fan interposed. “We knew your cousin as The Boy, and as such he must remain. We can have no tall monument here.”
On our return to the house we found Mrs. Hathern sitting on the piazza. Katy, to whom she had been teaching her duty towards her neighbor, had fallen asleep with her head on her stepmother’s lap, while Mrs. Hathern’s hand was lying lightly on the child’s yellow curls. It was a very pretty picture of domestic happiness, and I began to think that, as Carl had said, his mother was not a bad sort after all. There was an anxious, worried look on her face as we came up the steps, on which we all sat down, as the day was very hot.
“Carl,” she began, with a lump in her throat, “you have been to Paul’s grave and have heard how kindly he was cared for by Fanny and Annie?”
Carl nodded, and she went on: “It was a shock to me to know that he was here. You told your sisters, I hope, how we tried to trace him?”
“Yes, I told them everything,” Carl answered, and she continued: “I am glad you did. I couldn’t tell them when I first knew about it. I simply couldn’t, and I waited for you to come. I would give a great deal to have Paul back alive, but as that cannot be, I am glad to know where he is lying; and if you think best we will have him removed to our family lot in Mt. Auburn.”
“Never, no, never,” and Fan sprang to her feet. “He is our Boy. He died with us; we buried him; we loved him. He was ours, and we must keep him here with Charlie.”
“You shall, if you feel like that,” Mrs. Hathern said, “and both Carl and I are more thankful than we can express for the kindness he received from you all. I told your father while you were at his grave, and it affected him greatly. It is strange that our families should be thus brought together, and I hope that the memory of Paul may be a bond of sympathy and kindly feeling between us.”
She held out her hand first to Fanny and then to me, and as we took it we felt that there had already commenced a better understanding between us than had existed before.
“I told you she would face the music, and for her she did it handsomely,” Carl said, when we were alone with him. “She knows she was to blame, and if I were you, I wouldn’t nag her about him any more.”