I did not think hardly of them as I drew this mental picture. My aunt was only akin by marriage, and of the large troop of cousins we knew but little personally.
I was not without another invitation for that Christmas Day. Our good rector and his wife had asked me to go to their house, and they really wished me not to return to that which was home no longer. But for the sake of them and their little ones, I would not carry my sorrow to the rectory. I felt it would be cruel to kill by my presence the innocent mirth in which I was unfit to share, and so I went back to Birch Hill—my old home—to complete my preparations for leaving it. Hannah Brown, our former nurse, was waiting for me there, and after Uncle James left she assisted me to finish my work.
There was not much to be done. I had gradually prepared for leaving the only home I had ever known. In half an hour, I had passed through the various rooms, and taken a silent farewell of everything to which I had been accustomed from my very birth. All the contents of the house would soon be scattered, the place would have a new master, and I felt that when I next crossed its threshold it would be for the last time.
My old nurse had no children. She and her husband were a quiet, sober, elderly couple, so no young hearts would be saddened by my presence in their little home. Still, it may well be supposed in that, in spite of my efforts to be brave and look boldly towards the unknown future, my heart sank within me as I turned my back on all that had been associated with my life thus far.
That Christmas Day may well stand out among others, may well be deemed the date at which one stage of my life-journey ended. I call it the first of the six milestones.
[CHAPTER II.]
WITH all my troubles, however, my old nurse was very good to me on that sad Christmas Day. She left me alone. By this, I do not mean that she neglected me. My few wants were thoughtfully supplied, and whenever I looked into her kind face, I saw there a world of tender sympathy. But she did not speak much or trouble me with words, which would have been equally useless and meaningless at such a time. She kept the house quiet, and showed her desire to comfort me rather by deeds than words.
In so doing, Hannah Brown manifested a truer instinct than do many much better bred people. As a rule, one's friends, and kind ones too, think that in the first days of a great sorrow, we must be perpetually followed up and down, and consoled by torrents of commonplace verbiage. If they did but know the uselessness of words, and the pain of being compelled to listen, when the sore heart would fain bare its wounds before the Great Physician, and ask for healing at His compassionate hand alone!
Time, too, was precious with me. I must get work, and soon, though I knew not where to seek it. I had written to my own old governess, now the happy mother of a family, to ask her help, half hoping that she might find room for me as teacher to her children.
She would have done so, but already the post was filled by a kinswoman of her own. She did what was next best, and sent me the particulars of two situations, either of which she believed she had influence to obtain for me. I quote from her letter about the two places.