“Ah, Rhoda!” piped Helen’s treble, “we were children together, were we not? Oh! what sorrows I’ve gone through, and how I have been longing to talk to you!”
Before Miss Farren could reply, a feeble wail arose from the adjoining room. The baby had lost no time in announcing its presence, and Helen hurried in to the cradle. Dim as the light was, her mother must have detected the annoyance on Rhoda’s face. Or perhaps her quick instinct served her instead of sight, for she hastened to say—
“It doesn’t often cry, poor little mite! But it has been ailing to-day.”
There was only one flight of stairs in the house. As Rhoda slowly ascended them, the loud, steady ticking of the old clock brought back many a childish memory. Would the hours pass as swiftly and brightly as they had done in earlier years? She sighed as she thought of all the small miseries that would make time hang heavily on her hands. It never even occurred to her then that
“No true life is long.”
A fretful spirit will spin hours out of minutes, and weeks out of days.
“I told you, Rhoda, my dear, that we had given your room to Helen. I said so in a letter, didn’t I?” remarked Mrs. Farren, leading the way into the chamber that she had prepared for her daughter. “This is nearly as good. And I felt sure that you would not grudge the larger room to that poor thing and her child.”
“What is to be, must be,” Rhoda replied.
“Don’t stop to unpack anything,” continued her mother, trying not to notice the gloomy answer. “Come downstairs again as soon as you can. There’s a good fire, and a bit of something nice for tea. It’s a kind of day that takes the light and colour out of everything,” she added, with a slight shiver. “I’ll never grumble at the weather that God sends; yet I’m always glad when we’ve got through November.”