"None, I will see about it at once."
They went down, and he greeted Richard, then went away slowly, still begging them to excuse him for the inattention to them. Soon after, a barefooted boy of twelve or fourteen or so went whistling down the road past the house, staring at them as he went by; an hour after, the same boy returned with their bags; these were taken up-stairs by a thin, severe-looking, very neatly-dressed woman, who quickly and with only a word or two showed them their rooms, and told them that, as soon as they were dressed, tea would be ready.
Mary dressed in her mother's room with a sense of that mother's spirit around her. She fortunately had brought a dress with her, so that she was able to make a slight change. Then slowly and with great reverence she went down the stairs, meeting Dick in the hall, to whom she whispered, "O Dick! how I love him; but I am afraid it will kill him; the purpose for which he has lived these twenty years is taken from him. Can we give him another?"
"It may be that you can," Dick replied, looking tenderly into her sweet face, all aglow with the bright soul-life which had been kindled so actively in the last hours. "If you can, Mary, try it; do not think of anything else; stay with him, do anything you think right and good for him; he deserves more from us than—" Dick hesitated, not willing to speak unkindly of Mr. Brandon, who certainly had been a father to Mary—"than any other."
"I will try," Mary answered speaking quickly and in a low voice. "If it seems best that I should stay a little while, you will explain to papa? But perhaps, after all, it will be you who will be able to replace her best."
"We shall see," Dick said, and then Dr. Heremore was seen coming toward them, with less lightness in his step than they had noticed before; otherwise there was but little change, except that his voice was more mournfully tender than at first.
"It is a long time since I saw that place filled," he said, arranging a chair for Mary before the tea-urn. "And it is very sweet to me to see your bright young face before me; a long time since I have had so strong an arm to help me," he added, as Dick eagerly offered him some little assistance, "and I am very grateful for it."
There were no explanations that night; he talked to Dick and Mary as to very dear and honored guests, of everything likely to interest them, and was won by their eager attention to tell them many little things about his house and grounds, which were his evident pride and pleasure, all in the same subdued, courteous way that had attracted them from the first. There seemed, in the beginning, a far greater sympathy between Mary and him than he had with Dick, which was the reason, undoubtedly, why he devoted his attention more especially to his grandson, whose modest replies, given with a heightened color and an evident desire to please, were very winningly made.
"I have two noble grandchildren," he said to them as they stood up to say good-night. "My daughter, short as her life was, did not come into the world for a small purpose; she did not live for little good; she has sent me two to love and esteem, and to win some love from them, I trust—yes, I believe."