“I have pleasant apartments,” she wrote, “where you will be welcome as my guests; and, when you are rested, we will see about that voice. Don’t hesitate for any scruples whatever, but come. I want you, and when I want a thing, I want it, and generally get it. Come.”
It took Louie some little time to make up her mind with regard to going abroad. For herself there was no hesitancy. It was her mother’s health which troubled her. Could she endure the voyage and the change; she seemed so feeble and lifeless? She could endure both, Mrs. Grey said, evincing an eagerness to go which surprised Louie. They could not stay where they were, Mrs. Grey argued. It would be wrong to trespass upon the kindness of a stranger much longer. They must make a change soon. They had money enough to pay their passage, which would be second-class. She had heard that many respectable people went that way on the big steamers and were very comfortable. They could live inexpensively in Paris until Louie was able to earn something, either by her voice or teaching English.
This was Mrs. Grey’s reasoning, while, although Louie’s better judgment told her how unfit her mother was for the undertaking, her whole soul went out for the chance offered her to begin her life work—the paying of her father’s debts.
A second letter from Miss Percy, more urgent than the first, finally decided her, and a bleak, dreary November day found her and her mother on board the “Teutonic,” as second-class passengers. Everything which kind wishes at home could do for her had been done, and she had thankfully accepted the gifts brought to them—the warm sea hoods made by loving hands, the afghan and cushions for the deck, the basket of delicacies which the table would not furnish, and the bed-shoes Nancy Sharp had knit, and presented with hot tears suffusing her hard face. Mrs. White sent them a cure specific for sea-sickness, which Louie packed in a box with half a dozen more specifics, each warranted to cure.
Jack and Jill carried them to the station, where a large number of people were assembled to bid them good-by. Nancy Sharp’s voice was the loudest of all, and her hands waving her red shawl, the last image which stamped itself on Louie’s tear-blurred vision as the train shot through the deep cut in the hill and hid the station from view.
When she decided to leave Merivale she had begged Mr. Blake to tell her the name of the stranger who had so kindly given them the use of the house. But the old lawyer shook his head. The man didn’t want his right hand to know what his left had done. He had money enough, and the little rent they would have paid was only a drop in the bucket, he said, adding, “I can’t say that he isn’t something of a crank; but I promised to keep dark, and I have. You can write to him if you like. I haven’t sworn not to send him a letter, and I think maybe it would please him.”
“I wonder I never thought of that,” Louie said, and that night she wrote:
“My Dear Unknown Friend: We are going away from Merivale—from our home, where you have been so kind as to let us stay. I don’t know who you are, but I want to tell you how much I thank you for myself and mother and dear father, who died in his old home through your great kindness to us, entire strangers. Every day I ask God to bless you, and I am sure He will. Written words seem so inadequate to express all I feel, but some time I hope I may meet you face to face, and perhaps repay you for all you have done for us. God bless you, whoever you are; and if there is any good thing you desire more than another, may He give it to you. Very truly and gratefully yours,
“Louie Grey.”
This letter Mr. Blake directed, laughing to himself as he dropped it into the mail box, and thought, “I shouldn’t wonder if it went with her across the sea, and maybe she’ll hear from it personally.”