There was no chair opposite Joe, no plate, and knife and fork and napkin. Uncle Cephas liked a hot supper; they had chicken stew to-night, and boiled rice. It was like home, the faces, the things on the supper-table. She was homesick enough to long for some place “like” home. The parsonage could never be her home again, with Martha in her place; perhaps Martha had been wishing to come for years; perhaps her selfishness had kept Martha away.
John would be married, Martha would be in her place at the parsonage,—Don was too far away to know, and too absorbed in his wife to care; Mrs. Kenney did not really want her, she had only asked her to go home with her to get her away from the parsonage; the only home she had a right to was this home where her mother had been a little girl.
“Why, Judith,” cried Aunt Affy, rising, “dear child, what is the matter?”
“I wanted to come home,” said Judith.
XXXII. AUNT AFFY’S PICTURE.
“That only which we have within can we see without.”
—Emerson.
Judith stood at the sitting-room window looking out into the March snow-storm. There had been many snow-storms since that November night she came to the threshold and stood looking in at the happy supper-table. Aunt Affy had opened her arms and heart anew and folded her close: “My lamb has come back,” she said.
“To stay back,” Judith whispered, hiding her face on Aunt Affy’s shoulder.