“What do they do without you up there, honey?” asked another, an old negro woman whose life had been as black as her skin; “they will be wanting you bery much, I’m thinking;” and little Tim, dying of his broken bones, whispered as “Our Sister” kissed him, “I am wishing you could die first, Sister, and then it would be first-rate, seeing you along with the gentry at the Gate;” for, to Tim’s ignorant mind, the gentry of heaven were somewhat formidable. “And what must I say to them, plase your honor? when they come up and says ‘Good-morning, Tim;’ but if Sister were along of them she would say, ‘It is only Tim, and he never learned manners nohow.’”
Raby would come down sometimes, bringing his wife with him, and talk to Margaret about her work.
“You are very happy, dear,” he said one day to her; “I have often listened to your voice, and somehow it sounds satisfied.”
“Yes,” she returned, quietly, “quite satisfied. Does that sound strange, Raby? Oh, how little we know what is good for us. Once I thought Hugh’s love was everything, but I see now I was wrong. I suppose I should have been like other women if I had married him; but I should not have tasted the joy I know now. Oh, how I love my children—dirty, degraded, sinful as they are; how I love to spend myself in their service. God has been good to us, and given us both what He knew we wanted,” and Raby’s low “Amen” was sufficient answer.
There was one who would willingly have shared Margaret’s work, and that was Evelyn Selby; but her place was in the world’s battle-field, and she kept to her post bravely.
Fern, in her perfect happiness, often thought tenderly of the girl to whose noble generosity she owed it all; but for some years she and Evelyn saw little of each other. Fern often heard of her visits to the cottage where her mother and Fluff lived. She and Mrs. Trafford had become great friends. When Evelyn could snatch an hour from her numerous engagements, she liked to visit the orphanage where Mrs. Trafford worked. Some strange unspoken sympathy had grown up between the girl and the elder woman.
Evelyn’s brave spirit and dauntless courage had carried her through a trial that would have crushed a weaker nature. Her life was an uncongenial one. Often she sickened of the hollow round of gayety in which Lady Maltravers passed her days; but she would not waste her strength by complaint. But by and by, when she had lost the first freshness of her youth, and people had begun to say that Miss Selby would never marry now, Hedley Power crossed her path, and Evelyn found that she could love again.
Mr. Power was very unlike the bright-faced young lover of her youth. He was a gray-haired man in the prime of middle-age, with grave manners, and a quiet thoughtful face—very reticent and undemonstrative; but Evelyn did well when she married him, for he made his wife a happy woman.
“Evelyn is absurdly proud of Hedley,” Lady Maltravers would say; “but then he spoils her, and gives her her way in everything.” Every one thought it was a pity that they had no children; but Evelyn never owned that she had a wish ungratified. She contented herself with lavishing her affection on Erle’s two boys. To them Aunt Evelyn was a miracle of loveliness and kindness; and the children at the orphanage had reason to bless the handsome lady who drove down often to see them.
“I do think Evelyn is happy now,” Fern said one day to Erle, when they had encountered Evelyn and her husband in the Row.