“And yet there was much to make me happy,” she said. “I knew we were doing God’s work,—which somebody must do,—and when some poor creatures blessed us for coming to tell them the story of Jesus, I was so glad that I had gone to them, and my trials seemed as nothing. And then, there was Theo, always the same good, true husband to me.” She said this a little defiantly, as if to assure Beatrice that the heart, which once might have beaten for her, was now wholly loyal to another.
And Bee accepted it sweetly, but had her own opinion on the subject still.
“Yes, the Mr. Morton I used to know could never be anything but kind to one he loved well enough to make his wife,” she said; and then, by way of turning the conversation from Theodore to something else, she asked: “Were you sick all the time you were there?”
“Yes, most of the time. My children were born so fast,—four in five years. I lost a noble boy between Mamie and baby Eddie; that almost killed me, and I’ve never been the same since. There is consumption in our family far back, and I fear I have inherited it. My cough is terrible at times, but I hope much from Vermont air and Vermont nursing. Oh, I have longed so for the old home at the foot of the mountain, for some water from the well, for mother, and to lie on her bed as I used to when I was a child, and had the sick-headache.”
Her eyes filled with tears as she said this, and she leaned wearily back in her chair, while Bee involuntarily laid her soft, warm hand upon the thin, wasted one where the wedding-ring sat so loosely. Just then the door opened and Theodore Morton came in, the same Beatrice had heard at the missionary meeting, the same with whom she had strolled through the Kentucky woods and on the shore of Quinsigamond Pond. He knew her at once, but nothing in his face or voice betrayed any consciousness of the past, if he felt it. He met her naturally and cordially, said he was very glad to see her, that it was kind in her to find them out, and then passed on to his sick wife, on whose head he laid his hand caressingly, asking if it ached as hard as ever, or if she was feeling a little better.
“You look better certainly,” he said, regarding her curiously, not knowing that the improvement was owing to the artistic way in which Beatrice had knotted up the heavy hair, which showed at the sides and added apparent breadth to the thin, narrow face.
What a noble-looking man he was, and how well he appeared, as if he had associated with kings and queens instead of the poor heathen, and what a change his presence made in that dingy back room, which, with him in it, had at once an atmosphere of home and domestic happiness. He had been there but a few moments at the most, but in that time he had smoothed his wife’s hair, and called her Mollie, the pet name she liked, and made her smile, had tossed Bunchie in the air and stuffed her fat hands with candy, had kissed little Trixey, and given her a new picture-book, and taken the baby from her and was walking with it up and down the room to hush its wailing cry. And between times he talked to Beatrice, naturally and easily, asking for the people he used to know in Rothsay, and if she was living there now; then, stopping suddenly, he said:
“I beg your pardon for taking it for granted you were Miss Belknap still. Are you married? You used to be a sad flirt.”
He said the last playfully, and the two looked at each other an instant, and their eyes dropped suddenly as if alarmed at what they saw.
“I am Bee Belknap still, and as great a flirt as ever,” Bee replied; and then the Rev. Theo did a most remarkable thing; he turned to his wife, and said: