As she gave Beatrice the letter to read, I will give it to my readers. It was as follows:
“My Beloved Daughter:—Many thanks be to God for having brought you safely to America, and given us to believe that we shall see your face again and that of the little ones, our grandchildren. I cannot tell you how glad we are, your mother, and myself, and Aunt Nancy, too, though I think she dreads the litter and the grease-spots the children are sure to make, her life has been so quiet, you know. For myself, I long to see the bairns and hear their young voices. It will make me young again, though the years are bearing me down now so fast. Sixty-eight is nigh on to three score and ten, our allotted time.
“And now about your coming here for the summer. Of course you are welcome as the blossoms of May, but I should be keeping back something if I did not tell you just the situation of things in the old parsonage. Your mother is down with nervous prostration, and has been for months, and as she is very weak I occupy a separate room from hers. Your Aunt Nancy has another, and that only leaves your own old room for you and Theodore and the three children. Of course, I don’t count that place over the woodshed, where we can have a bed for a girl or a boy. You cannot have three children in your room even when your husband is away, it is so small, and Nancy would as soon have a woodchuck in with her as a child; so at first it was a question how to dispose of you. But Providence provided, as He always does. Your mother and I made it a subject of prayer, asking in our blind way that God would incline Nancy either to change rooms, or to have a little cot set up in hers, and feeling confident He would hear the prayer of faith. He did hear and answer, but in His own way, which was not ours. He did not soften your Aunt Nancy, but he sent your cousin Julia to us to say that she would gladly take one of the little girls for a while. You know she is rich and has no children, and it will be a nice home for the child, and Nancy says, ‘Let her have the one that will be likely to fill our house the fullest and make the most to do,’ whatever that may be.
“And now, having stated the case as it is, we shall be glad to see you any day, only on Nancy’s account you may as well let us know, as everything will have to be scoured with soap and sand. I hear her now at the kitchen table, which somebody has spilt a drop of milk on.
“Your mother joins me in love, and prays for you.
“Affectionately your father,
“Cyrus Brown.”
“What a nice letter, and what a good old man he must be,” Beatrice said, as she finished reading.
“Yes,” Mrs. Morton answered, hesitatingly; “it is nice, and he is good, and mother, too; but the idea of losing one of the children is dreadful to me. There is always some thorn in my rose. I have thought so much of going back to the old house under the apple trees, and having my little ones with me; and now you see what he says,—one must go to Cousin Julia Hayden.”
In Mrs. Morton’s roses there would always be thorns, fancied or real, but Bee did not tell her so; she merely asked: “Who is Mrs. Hayden? Is she fond of children? Will she be kind to them?”