"Now, go to bed, Dolly, and try to get a little sleep. Remember what the good book says—'Sorrow may last for a night, but joy cometh in the morning.' We may be worriting ourselves for nothing after all."
The kind honest sympathy of this true friend roused Dorothy from her stupor of grief. Raising her head from Mrs. Rushmere's supporting arms, she promised to attend to all her injunctions, and reconcile her mind to her altered lot. The women parted for the night, and Dorothy laid her aching temples on her pillow, and soon fell into a deep and dreamless slumber.
CHAPTER IV.
DOROTHY'S DEPARTURE.
The sun had just risen when Dorothy unclosed her eyes. Everything looked bright on earth, and in the heavens, in the early flush of that lovely June morning. The perfume of the honeysuckle and briar rose, that clasped the old porch in their fragrant embrace, and climbed to the very roof of the house, mingled deliciously with the scent of the new mown hay. Who, looking abroad into the sweet face of nature, at that pure still hour, which an old poet has felicitously named "the bridal of the earth and sky," could believe in the wickedness and depravity of the human portion of her children.
In great cities, enveloped in the miasma of moral depravity, this depressing conviction comes home to the heart of the thinking and religious inhabitants, where not an hour in the diurnal circle is unmarked by crime,—it is only in the solitude of the country that nature puts on a virgin grace, and man forgets in her august presence the stern reality and withering blight of sin.
In spite of the great sorrow that lay at her heart, the earth had not lost the freshness of Eden for Dorothy, and she had still faith in the goodness of her fellow-creatures. She sprung lightly from her bed, sorry that the birds had not roused her an hour sooner, for she had a great amount of work to do that morning.
She had forgotten all the anguish of the previous night, until it was brought back to her remembrance, by the dull aching sense of weariness that pressed upon her heart and brain.