“Are you doing one now? One new one. You look so.”
“I am on the way to it.”
“Where are you going?”
“Literally and figuratively I am on the way to it. I am giving up study and everything else to go and take care of Aunt Rody.”
“How splendid of you. I knew you would do something real some day,” Nettie said with enthusiasm. “You haven’t been my ideal for nothing. Mother has kept telling me I might be disappointed in you; but I knew I never should.”
After that how could she feel faint-hearted?
“O, Judith,” said Aunt Affy, meeting her on the piazza, “how did you know I couldn’t do without you any longer? Joe has gone for the doctor; Rody has had another spell.”
In her own little room that night the girl knelt on the strip of rag carpet, and, with her head buried in the pink and white quilt, prayed that the voices of her self-will might be lost in the voice of the Holy Spirit. The coming back was even harder than she feared; Mr. King had not told her God’s truth when he said: “His way is always easier than we think.”
The thought that she was bravely doing a hard thing did not brace her to the bearing of it; she was not bearing it at all; she was living through it.
Roger had not once told her she was brave, Marion was not more than usually sympathetic; the neighbors were taking her coming back as a matter of course—something to be expected; they would have blamed her if she had not come; Aunt Rody every day was less fretful toward her, more satisfied with her nursing; Aunt Affy busy in kitchen and dairy, with the new importance of her marriage, and being for the first time mistress in her own house, seemed forgetful that the girl had come from any brighter life, forgetful that she had ever left the old place and its homespun ways, and, most discouraging of all, forgetful that any other help in household or sick-room was desired or might be had by searching and for money. For the first time in her life Aunt Affy was selfish. In her own contentment she forgot, or did not think it possible that the girl of eighteen could be discontented.