Very adroitly Alice waived all objections, and bore Adah off in triumph.
“I knew you must be lonely up there,” she said, as they drove slowly along, “and there can be no harm in visiting one’s sick sister.”
Anna surely did not think there was, as her warm, welcoming kisses fully testified.
“I wanted so much to see you to-day,” she said, “that I have worked myself into quite a fever; but knowing mother as I do, I feared she might not sanction your coming;” then proudly turning down the blanket, she disclosed the red-faced baby, who, just one week ago, had come to the Riverside Cottage.
“Isn’t he a beauty?” she asked, pressing her lips upon the wrinkled forehead. “A boy, too, and looks so much like Charlie, but—” and her soft, blue eyes seemed more beautiful than ever with the maternal love shining from them. “I shall not call him Charles, nor yet John, though mother’s heart is set on the latter name. I can’t. I loved my brother dearly, and never so much as now that he is dead, but my baby-boy must not bear his name, and so I have chosen Hugh, Hugh Richards. I know it will please you both,” and she glanced archly at Alice, who blushingly kissed the little boy named for her promised husband.
They talked of Hugh awhile, and then Anna spoke of Irving Stanley, expressing her fears that she could not see him to thank him for his kindness and forbearance to her erring brother.
“He must be noble and good,” she said, then turning to Adah, she continued. “You know him well. Do you like him?”
“Yes,” and Adah’s face was all ablaze, as the simple answer dropped from her lips.
For a moment Anna regarded her intently, then her eyes were withdrawn and her white hand beat the counterpane softly, but nothing more was said of Irving Stanley.
The next day near the sun-setting, they buried the dead soldier, Mrs. Richards and Adah standing side by side as the body was lowered to its last resting place, the older leaning upon the younger for support, and feeling as she went back to her lonely home and heard the merry laugh of little Willie in the hall that she was glad her son had married the young girl, who, now that John was gone forever, began to be very dear to her as his wife, the Lily whom he had loved so much. In the dusky twilight of that night when alone with Adah, she told her as much, speaking sadly of the past, which she regretted, and wishing she had never objected to receiving the girl about whom John wrote so lovingly.