Not long after, Rind asked Miss Grundy if William Bender was going away.
"Not as I know on," answered Miss Grundy. "What made you think of that?"
"'Cause," returned Rind, "I heard Sal Furbush having over a mess of stuff about the spark's leaving when Mary did, and I thought mebby he was going, as you say he's her spark!"
The next afternoon Jenny, managing to elude the watchful eyes of her mother and governess, came over to the poor-house.
"I'm so glad you are going," said she, when she heard of Mrs. Mason's visit. "I shall be lonesome without you, but you'll have such a happy home, and when you get there mayn't I tell George Moreland about you the next time I see him?"
"I'd rather you wouldn't," said Mary, "for I don't believe he remembers me at all."
"Perhaps not," returned Jenny, "and I guess you wouldn't know him; for besides being so tall, he has begun to shave, and Ida thinks he's trying to raise whiskers!"
That night, when Mary was alone, she drew from its hiding-place the golden locket, but the charm was broken, and the pleasure she had before experienced in looking at it, now faded away with Jenny's picture of a whiskered young man, six feet high! Very rapidly indeed did Mary's last week at the poor-house pass away, and for some reason or other, every thing went on, as Rind said, "wrong end up." Miss Grundy was crosser than usual, though all observed that her voice grew milder in its tone whenever she addressed Mary, and once she went so far as to say, by way of a general remark, that she "never yet treated any body, particularly a child, badly, without feeling sorry for it."
Sal Furbush was uncommonly wild, dancing on her toes, making faces, repeating her nine hundred and ninety-nine rules of grammar, and quoting Scripture, especially the passage, "The Lord gave, and the Lord taketh away, &c." Uncle Peter, too, labored assiduously at "Delia's Dirge," which he intended playing as Mary was leaving the yard.
Saturday came at last, and long before the sun peeped over the eastern hills, Mary was up and dressed. Just as she was ready to leave her room, she heard Sally singing in a low tone, "Oh, there'll be mourning,—mourning,—mourning,—mourning, Oh, there'll be mourning when Mary's gone away."