"Things are pretty unequal in this world," Mr. Carpenter began again. "Look at Serena and you. One sister with more than she can use; the other talking of sewing for a livelihood! And all because you would marry a poor man. A poor reason!"
"Liph, I had my choice," his wife said, with a shadow of a smile. "She is the one to be pitied."
"Well, I think so," he said. "For if her heart were as roomy as her purse, she would have shewn it before now. My dear, do not expect anything from Serena. Till next fall you will have the shelter of this house; and that will give you time to look about you."
"Liph, you must not talk so!" his wife cried; and her voice broke. She threw herself upon her husband's breast, and they held each other in a very long, still, close embrace.
Mr. Carpenter was quite right in some at least of his expectations. His own life was not prolonged to the summer. In one of the last days of a rough spring, the time came he had spoken of, when his wife and child were left alone.
She had till fall to look about her. But perhaps, in the bitterness of her loneliness, she had not heart to push her search after work with sufficient energy. Yet Mrs. Carpenter never lacked energy, and indulged herself selfishly no more in grief than she did in joy. More likely it is that in the simple region of country she inhabited there was not call enough for the work she could do. Work did not come, at any rate. The only real opening for her to earn her livelihood, was in the shape of a housekeeper's situation with an old bachelor farmer, who was well off and had nobody to take care of him. In her destitution, I do not know but Mrs. Carpenter might have put up with even this plan; but what was she to do with Rotha? So by degrees the thought forced itself upon her that she must take up her old notion and go to the great city, where there were always people enough to want everything. How to get there, and what to do on first arriving there, remained questions. Both were answered.
As Mr. Carpenter had foreseen, the mortgages came in the fall to foreclosure. The sale of the land, however, what he had not foreseen, brought in a trifle more than the mortgage amount. To this little sum the sale of household goods and furniture and stock, added another somewhat larger; so that altogether a few hundreds stood at Mrs. Carpenter's disposal. This precisely made her undertaking possible. It was a very doubtful undertaking; but what alternative was there? One relation she would find, at the least; and another Mrs. Carpenter had not in the wide world. She made her preparations very quietly, as she did everything; her own child never knew how much heart-break was in them.
"Shall we go first to aunt Serena's, mother?" Rotha asked one day.
"No."
The "no" was short and dry. Rotha's instinct told her she must not ask why, but she was disappointed. From a word now and then she had got the impression that this relation of theirs was a very rich woman and lived accordingly; and fancy had been busy with possibilities.