"Well, there will be one mouth less to feed," put in Prudence in her usual strong fashion; "and with the present exorbitant price of meat that's something for which to be thankful."
But though the speech was not sympathetic Miss Prudence's lean brown hand trembled a little as she unlocked the tea-caddy and measured out the scanty modicum of tea. Poor Miss Prudence! there was still a warm woman's heart beating under the harsh, unloving exterior, though it seldom found utterance. Her one object in life had been to eke out a narrow income, and bring down her own and her sisters' wants to the limits of penury. A small saving constituted her chief joy; the low standard had dwarfed her moral stature; petty cares had narrowed and contracted her; the mote in her eye hindered the incoming of heart sunshine, and made her life a hard, unlovely thing.
For it is a sad truth and a painful one to many of us, that in a great measure we form our own lives. The wide blanks, the vacuum that nature abhors, are all self-created. Outside the void, the chaos, the central abyss of self, there wait all manner of patient duties, joys, griefs, possible sufferings, a world of human beings to be loved, to replenish emptiness and the waste of spent passion.
Miss Prudence was one of those unhappy beings who read the meanings of life by the light of a farthing dip. Within her secret sanctuary the small god Economy dwelt as a favored deity. She would sweep her house like the woman in the parable for the smallest possible missing coin, and go to bed in despair for the loss of it; but she left her own inner chambers miserably unclean and full of dust and cobwebs.
And yet, as in many other persons, Miss Prudence's faults were only caricatures of virtues. She was miserly, but it was for her sisters' sakes more than for her own. To keep the little house bright and respectable she toiled from morning till night; but I do not know that any of them loved her better for it. It was Prue's vocation, her one taste. If she could only have read to Miss Charity, and taken her share in the nursing, Faith would have been more grateful to her.
She fretted, as was natural, over that little speech of Miss Prudence's, for she was faint with excessive happiness, and thirsted for a pure draught of sisterly sympathy.
"Is that all you have to say to me, Prue?" she demanded in an injured tone.
"What have I got to say," returned poor Miss Prudence, looking greyer and grimmer, "except that it is a fine thing to be Dr. Stewart's wife and the mistress of Juniper Lodge, and not be obliged to count your pence till your eyes ache with trying to make out that five are equal to six? That's what I've been doing all my life, Faith, and no thanks to me either; and it does not always agree with one."
"There, there, take your tea, Faith," interrupted Miss Charity, testily; "we've wasted more than an hour already over this business of yours, and we shall get through very little reading to-night."
"Nonsense, Charity; let Faith have her talk out," observed Hope, in her good-humored way. "We don't have weddings every day in the family, and it is hard if we don't make much of them when they come. Well, and is the day fixed, Faith?"