'I don't think that would answer with me,' returned Olive doubtfully. 'There are so many things I do not like, the disagreeable duties quite fill one's day. I like hearing you talk very much, aunt. But there is Cardie's voice, and he will be disappointed not to find the tea ready when he comes in from church.'
'Then I will not detain you another moment; but you must promise me one thing.'
'What is that?'
'There must be no German book behind the urn to-night. Better ill-learnt verbs than jarring harmony, and a trifle that vexes the soul of another ceases to be a trifle. There, run along, my child.'
Mildred had seen very little of her brother that day, and after tea she accompanied him for a quiet stroll in the churchyard. There was much that she had to hear and tell. Arnold would fain know the particulars of his mother's last hours from her lips, while she on her side yearned for a fuller participation in her brother's sorrow, and to gather up the treasured recollections of the sister she had loved so well.
The quiet evening hour—the scene—the place—fitted well with such converse. Arnold was less reticent to-night, and though his smothered tones of pain at times bore overwhelming testimony to the agony that had shattered his very soul, his expressions of resignation, and the absence of anything like bitterness in the complaint that he had lost his youth, the best and brightest part of himself, drew his sister's heart to him in endearing reverence.
'I was dumb, and opened not my mouth, because Thou didst it,' seemed to be the unspoken language of his thoughts, and every word breathed the same mournful submission to what was felt to be the chastisement of love.
'Dear, beautiful Betha; but she was ready to go, Arnold?'
'None so ready as she—God forbid it were otherwise—but I do not know. I sometimes think the darling would have been glad to stay a little longer with me. Hers was the nature that saw the sunny side of life. Heriot could never make her share in his dark views of earthly troubles. If the cloud came she was always looking for the silver lining.'
'It is sad to think how rare these natures are,' replied Mildred. 'What a contrast to our mother's sickbed!'