“Hush, Sylvia!” whispered Courage, feeling instinctively that this commonplace remark was untimely; and then by grace of the same beautiful intuition she asked gently, “Did it make you feel very badly to see your little Belle's coat on a strange little girl?”
“It almost frightened me. Courage, for Belle had auburn curls, too, and you seemed so like her as you stood there. Then, after a moment, when I had had time to think, I felt pretty sure it must be Belle's own coat that I saw.”
“I am sorry that I happened to have it on,” said Courage; “I would not like to have seen anything of my papa's on anybody else.”
“And so I thought,” said Mrs. Everett, wondering that a child should so apparently understand every phase of a great sorrow, “but I find I was mistaken,” and Mrs. Everett, moving her chair close beside Courage, took her little brown hand in hers, as she added: “More than once since that evening it has been on my lips to ask Miss Julia if she knew who was the owner of Belle's coat.”
“And more than once,” said Miss Julia, “it has been on my lips to tell without your asking, and then I feared only to start for you some train of sad thoughts.” Miss Julia by this time had gotten the best of her tears, and stood behind Courage affectionately stroking the beautiful wavy hair, for both she and Mrs. Everett were longing to give expression to the overpowering sense of gratitude welling up within them.
“Do you know what the black bow is for?” Courage asked of Mrs. Everett.
“I thought it was mourning for some one, perhaps.”
“Yes; it is mourning for my papa. A little girl told me I ought to wear all black clothes, but Miss Julia thought not; only she just tied this bow on for me the last day of sewing-school, because I wanted to have something that would tell that I was very lonely without him. Soldiers wear mourning like that, you know.”
All this while Larry had sat quietly on one side, his dimmed eyes resting proudly on Courage; but now he had something to say on his own account.
“It was all my fault, sir,” he began abruptly, addressing Mr. Everett—“that accident on the bay a few weeks back. I was losing my sight, and was just going to give up my life on the water when I found that Hugh Masterson had died, and that Courage there had set her heart on spending the summer with me on the boat. And so I tried for her sake to hold on a while longer, but it wa'nt no use, and I'd like to made an end to us all that evening. I wish sometime when ye're aboard the St. Johns ye'd have a word with the captain, and tell him how it all happened, and that Larry Starr has not touched a drop of liquor these twenty years; he thought I was drunk, you know, and no wonder.”