I felt leaving home very much, for they all seemed to cling to me and to lean on me after that time of sorrow. My father had aged a great deal, and had turned in a few weeks into an elderly man.
My poor mother said over and over again that she had nothing to do.
"Oh, Peter," she said one day, "I used to grumble, and to think I had a hard time of it, with so many to cook for, and so many clothes to mend, and so many stockings to darn, and such lots of things to wash and to iron, and so much to see after. But now, God knows, I would give all I have to have one of those busy days back again. I didn't know, till they were gone, how much I should miss them all. God forgive me if I ever grumbled at having to work for them!"
It was a very different home now—so quiet and still, with so many empty beds and silent rooms, with so much space at the large dinner-table, which used to be so well filled, with so many vacant chairs, and with a row of caps hanging on the pegs in the passage, which were never taken down from their places, but which mother seemed as if she could not take away. Every one who came to the house must have noticed the difference in our once merry, noisy home.
Yet it was a different home in another way, for now both father and mother were leading their children in the way to heaven.
It was a great effort to my father to open the Bible and begin family prayer, but he made it. It was a great effort for my mother to put on her bonnet, and, in the face of astonished neighbors, to go to church again, but she made it. And when I left them, I had the joy of knowing that whenever the cry was heard:
"Behold the Bridegroom cometh: go ye out to meet Him!"
We should, as a family, be all ready to obey the summons; for in that great day when the King shall gather together His own, every one of us would be taken—none of us would be left behind.
I went to Calvington by the early train, and walked from the station to Grassbourne. Mrs. Bagot gave me a warm welcome when I arrived at the cottage.
"I'm glad to see you, my lad," she said; "I am, indeed. The master and me have been awful lonesome without you, we have, indeed. What with our lady's trouble, and the loss of that dear boy, we've been very dull and low altogether."