"—a cheerful little verse, Sally. I must set it to music and sing it to myself whenever I feel in exuberant spirits like now. 'Fresh and rosy and young'"—looking at herself critically in the glass. "Yes, I'm afraid I don't look like dropping into a picturesque decline yet a bit; but then, Sally, if all my troubles are to come, wouldn't it be as well for me to give them the slip—"
"Tut, tut, Miss Addie! Much ye know about it! When you've got your troubles, you won't be anxious to give them the slip; you'll stick to them fast enough, I'll be bound!"
"Stick to my troubles, Sally? You're not talking poetry now, but blank verse, a thing I never could understand."
"Never mind; are ye going out? You understand that, I hope?"
"Oh, yes, you old bother!"
She walks languidly round the old garden, picks herself a bunch of pale May blossoms, and then re-enters the house, and tries the handle of the drawing-room door, hearing sounds of inviting merriment within, but the key is still obdurately turned.
After some minutes of irresolution, she goes into her husband's study opposite, and sinks into a chair at his desk, on which her head droops wearily.
"I do miss you, Tom—I do, I do! I wish you'd come home—I wish you'd come home! I wonder what you would say if I showed you that little red stain on my handkerchief? Would you be startled as Sally was? Would you be sorry or glad, frightened or relieved? It may mean nothing—I dare say it does mean nothing; but still, if it did mean liberty to you, would you take it gladly or painfully? Would you miss me at all as I miss you now? Would you sometimes come here of an evening, when your busy day was done, and think a little of the foolish hot-headed girl you once loved and tried to make happy, but couldn't? Would you think of her kindly, pitifully, tenderly even, and forgive her at last?"
"'Fresh and rosy and young,
And all my troubles to come.'
"Bother that idiotic little distich—I can't get it out of my head! 'All my troubles to come'—'all my troubles to come.' A pretty prospect! As if I have not had enough of them already. Much Sally knows! 'All my troubles to come,' and I only twenty-one—twenty-one to-day; and nobody wished me a happy birthday—nobody. It is the first time in twenty-one years that I have been forgotten, wholly, completely forgotten! Sally might have remembered; she helped to bring me into the world. Aunt Jo might have remembered; she was my godmother. Pauline, Bob, Hal—ah, well, they were full of other things! Perhaps it won't be so hard to forget me if I—I go altogether. The first time in twenty-one years! It's an evil augury; it means—means perhaps"—with a shuddering sigh—"I may never see another birthday. Oh, if some one would break the spell! I don't want to die—I don't want to die! I'm too young yet, I'm too young. No matter what my troubles may be, I don't want to die. Mother had a longer time; she was twenty-nine, and I am only twenty-one—twenty-one—"