Five years have passed since that day. Still I live at Nook Cottage; but not alone. Of us three, Josephine is in heaven. Letty is still troubled upon earth; her husband tests her patience and her temper every hour, but both temper and patience are in good training; and if ever Henry Malden is reclaimed, as I begin to see reasons to hope he will be, he will owe it to the continual example and gentle goodness of his wife, who has grown from a petulant, thoughtless girl into a lovely, unselfish, religious woman, a devoted mother and wife, "refined by fire." For me, the last,—whenever now I say, as I used to say, "Three of us," I mean a new three,—Paul, baby, and me; for Jo was not a prophet. Four years ago, while my heart- ache for her was fresh and torturing, a new pastor came to the little village church of Valley Mills. Mr. Lyman was very good; I have seen other men with as fine natural traits, but I have never seen a man or woman so entirely good. He came to me to console me; for he, too, had just lost a sister, and in listening to his story I for a moment forgot my own, as he meant I should. But I did not love him,—no, not till I discovered, months afterward, that he suffered incessantly from ill-health, and was all alone in the world. I was too much a woman to resist such a plea. I pitied him; I tried to take care of him; and when he asked me if I liked the office of sick-nurse, I told him I liked it well enough to wish it were for life; and now, when he wants to light my eyes out of that dreamy expression that tells him I am re-living the past, and thinking of the dead, he tells me, for the sake of the flash that follows, that I offered myself to him! Perhaps I did. But he is well now; the air of the Tunxis hills, and the rest of a quiet life, partly, I hope, good care also, have restored to him his lost health. And I am what Jo said I should have been,—a blessed mother, as well as a happy wife. The baby that lies across my lap has traits that endear her to me doubly,—traits of each of us three cousins: Josephine's hair on her little nestling head, Letty's apple-blossom complexion, and my eyes, except that they are serene when they are not smiling. I ask only of the love that has given me all this unexpected joy, that my little Jo may have one better trait,—her father's heart; a stronger, tenderer, and purer heart than belonged to any one among "Three of us!"
WHAT A WRETCHED WOMAN SAID TO ME.
All the broad East was laced with tender rings
Of widening light; the Daybreak shone afar;
Deep in the hollow, 'twixt her fiery wings,
Fluttered the morning star.
A cloud, that through the time of darkness went
With wanton winds, now, heavy-hearted, came
And fell upon the sunshine, penitent,
And burning up with shame.
The grass was wet with dew; the sheep-fields lay
Lapping together far as eye could see;
And the great harvest hung the golden way
Of Nature's charity.
My house was full of comfort; I was propped
With life's delights, all sweet as they could be,
When at my door a wretched woman stopped,
And, weeping, said to me,—
"Its rose-root in youth's seasonable hours
Love in thy bosom set, so blest wert thou;
Hence all the pretty little red-mouthed flowers
That climb and kiss thee now!
"I loved, but I must stifle Nature's cries
With old dry blood, else perish, I was told;
Hence the young light shrunk up within my eyes,
And left them blank and bold.
"I take my deeds, all, bad as they have been,—
The way was dark, the awful pitfall bare;—
In my weak hands, up through the fires of sin,
I hold them for my prayer."
"The thick, tough husk of evil grows about
Each soul that lives," I mused, "but doth it kill?
When the tree rots, the imprisoned wedge falls out,
Rusted, but iron still.