“Thank you!” she said meekly. “I will try, but it’s hard to be resigned when one is young, and all one’s life seems shattered. I don’t know what to do next. Every arrangement so far has been made, ‘till dad comes home,’ and now that hope has gone, and what am I to do? I have no home, and no work, and nobody needs me. Aunt Margaret would take me in, of course, but she would not like it as a permanency any more than I should myself. She has her own way, and I have mine, and we did not agree very well. She was very kind when she thought I was going away, but at the bottom of her heart she was glad. She doesn’t need me, you see! I don’t help her at all.”
“But you could make her need you! You could help her if you went back determined to make it your work in life!”
Mrs Nisbet took the girl’s hand in hers and pressed it gently, and Sylvia looked into her face with miserable, honest eyes.
“Yes—I could! I could shut my lips up tight and never answer back, and look interested when I was bored, and go little walks up and down the terrace, and play cribbage when I wanted to read, and read aloud dull books when I wanted to read lively ones to myself, and pretend to like what I really hate and detest.”
“Poor lassie! It does sound dull. I’ll tell you a secret, though. It would not be pretence very long, for it is one of the blessed recompenses in life that if we conquer self, and perform a duty whole-heartedly and cheerfully, it is distasteful no longer, but becomes more interesting than we could have believed possible in the old rebellious days.”
“Does it? But I don’t think I quite want to be satisfied with that kind of life,” Sylvia said slowly. “I don’t wish to seem disrespectful, but really and truly Aunt Margaret’s ideas are terribly narrow and old-fashioned, and I shouldn’t like it a bit if I were like her when I was old. I have managed pretty well so far, for I had nice friends, and was always looking forward to the time when I should have my own home, but don’t you understand how different it is now, and how dreary it seems to settle down to it as a permanency?” She looked up wistfully in Mrs Nisbet’s face, and met a smile of kindest understanding.
“But there is no necessity to grieve over the future, child! At your age arrangements are rarely ‘permanent,’ and you are concerned only with the next step. It seems for the moment as if it were the right course to return to London, so try to look upon the situation from a new standpoint, and face it bravely. Forget your aunt’s shortcomings, and remember only that she is your father’s only remaining relative, the playmate and companion of his youth, and that you are connected by a common sorrow and a common loss. Set yourself to brighten her life, and to fill it with wider interests; forget yourself, in short, and think about other people. When you have learned that lesson, dear, you will have solved the great secret of life, and found the key to happiness and peace of mind.”
“Yes,” sighed Sylvia faintly. It sounded very sweet and very beautiful, but, oh, so terribly difficult to accomplish! If it had been a big thing, on great, heroic sacrifice which she was called upon to make, she could have braced herself to the effort, and have borne it with courage, but the little daily pin-pricks, the chafings of temper, the weariness of uncongenial companionship—these were the hardest test, the most cruel tax upon endurance.
Day after day, week after week, month after month, the same uneventful, monotonous existence—and suppose for one moment that Jack married Mollie Burrell, and Bridgie returned to her Irish home! Sylvia shivered and shut her eyes as at an unbearable prospect, and Mrs Nisbet’s voice said softly in her ear—
“‘I do not ask to see the distant scene. One step enough for me!’ Take each day as it comes, dear, and try to live it bravely without thinking of to-morrow. We will travel with you as far as Paris, and have a few days together before you go on to London. I wish you would have stayed with us longer, but perhaps it will be better for us all to be apart for a time, and meet again later on. We shall be in London in autumn, and one of my first visits will be to you. Your father has been like a brother to my husband for years past, and we shall always feel a very close interest in your welfare.