Not for worlds would Mr. Agnew have so arranged his affairs had it not been that in his half-delirious state he was subject to the will of another. He had always intended to settle a competence upon Mrs. Lyman—his mother-in-law. He had expected to live years yet. Who does not?
Mrs. Agnew lost no time. As soon as the funeral services were over she questioned Mrs. Lyman as to her plans for the future. The poor old lady felt bewildered at having to make any plans, so lovingly had she been cared for all her life. She had scarcely realized as yet that her one protector was gone; above all, that he had made no provision for her. Homeless and penniless and nearly seventy years of age, where should she go? What should she do? Where would a helpless being go in straits but to the One who plans and governs our lives? And thither she went. She well knew the road. Old friends gathered about her with kindly offers of aid, but she believed she saw her path plainly, and declined their many invitations to tarry with them for a time. She had a little money of her own, enough to insure her entrance into the "Home for Aged Women," and there she determined to go. Mrs. Lyman had occasionally driven with her daughter through the grounds of the "Home." She had admired the stately edifice, and remarked that it was a grand charity; she had also contributed to it; but it had not entered her mind that she was ever to become one of its inmates. She thought of it that afternoon as the carriage which conveyed her there wound slowly up the avenue. The trials of the past few days had been peculiarly sharp. She had gone out from the dear home, with its precious memories, forever. She could not, without contention, claim even her daughter's gifts to herself; contend she would not, so she left them: so many things that almost had a tongue to speak of other days. There were no tears in her eyes, and the old face was placid as she leaned back and looked up at rows and rows of windows. She even repeated to herself some favorite lines:
"That's best which God sends.
'Twas his will; it is mine."
The room Mrs. Lyman shortly found herself in was a strong contrast to the one her daughter had carefully fitted up for her. It was spotlessly clean and trim; the walls were high and white, the furniture of the plainest, the floors bare except for the strip of carpet by the bed and one by the window, where the occupant would be supposed to sit in the cane-seat rocker. It depended entirely on one's previous surroundings what her first impressions of life in this place would be. Old Mrs. Carter, who had lived at sixes and sevens all her life, with scarcely a corner that she could call her own, thought her room was next to Heaven itself. To Mrs. Lyman it simply looked bare and dreary. The buzz in the long dining room, mingling with the clatter of cups and spoons, was cheerfulness itself to Mrs. Carter, while to Mrs. Lyman's refilled ears and sensitive nerves it was positively distressing. It was trying to her, too, to mingle with all sorts of natures, to listen to garrulous complaints and garrulous stories from gossipy old women. She would much have preferred to shut herself in with her books and her own thoughts, but she did not. Her Master was always kind and helpful to the most uncongenial people; so would she be, for his sake. Necessarily, though, it was a lonely, monotonous life for her. Old friends were too remote and too busy to remember her often.
One afternoon she sat at her window looking down into the street, when a carriage drew up, and a young lady stepped lightly out. The coachman handed her a basket of flowers, and she almost ran up the broad stone steps, with that childlike eagerness of manner which is in refreshing contrast to the languid air of many of her class.
Mrs. Lyman listened eagerly as her fresh young voice was heard in the hall. The golden hair, and eyes as blue as the hyacinths she carried, brought to her visions of another girl as bright and graceful. Just so she looked, years ago, her dear lost Margaret. Then the mother's heart went back over the girlhood and womanhood of her darling, and just as she was wondering how it was possible for Robert Agnew ever to have fancied he loved that other woman, when his life had been so blessed with Margaret, there came a knock at the door, and the matron brought in the bright-haired girl with her flowers, saying:—
"Mrs. Lyman, I have brought Miss Harlowe in to see you. She's come on ahead to tell you that spring is coming some day."
She looked sweet and fair enough to be spring's herald in very truth, coming in, as she did, out of the snow and sleet of the winter day, roses in her hands and roses on her cheeks, looking up almost shyly into the face of the stately old lady.
Each regarded the other for a moment with surprise and admiration, and Esther Harlowe, yielding to a sudden impulse, reached up and left a kiss soft as a rose leaf on the faded old cheek; then selecting the choicest of the roses, begged her to accept them.
They both forgot themselves. The young lady forgot that she was being kind to a "poor old body" in "The Old Lady's Home."