"And what says Aunt Martha?"
"She says very little about it, though we all know that Nelly would not have been her choice for Thomas. She told Ellen, when first she heard it, that she had interfered, already, too much with the lives that other people had to live, and that she no longer felt that confidence in her own judgment she once had; that humility was the latest flower of her Christian experience, and though but a weak and sickly bloom, she wished to cherish it."
"Poor Aunt Martha. She has suffered much, then?"
"Yes, but mother and Ellen say she has grown daily gentler under her sufferings."
"Only natures of true worth are 'refined by the furnace of affliction,' to my observation—Aunt Martha evidently deserved not the youthful scorn I felt for her. But tell me more of Ellen—she is, you think, really happy to be Aunt Martha's nurse?"
"Yes, Ellen is more light-hearted recently than I have ever known her; Aunt Martha called her, talking to mother yesterday, 'a well-spring of happiness,' and said it made her very thankful when she considered how Providence had forced upon her a daughter against her time of need, in spite of her utter undeservingness."
Scarcely could I wait to greet my parents, I was so eager to see Ellen, to fathom the true cause of her unaccustomed gayety of spirits, which even the love-absorbed Jean had noticed. I found her so busy with household duties, and attentions to Aunt Martha, that I was obliged to content myself, after the first greetings—which told me without need of words that I was forgiven—with the vision of her flitting about busily, and the exchange of an occasional meaningless remark. When reluctantly I rose to go, Uncle Thomas asked me to stay to tea, and I accepted so eagerly, that I think Aunt Martha guessed, at last, my secret. Either because of that, or the way my truant gaze followed Ellen's every movement. At any rate she surmised the real reason of my prompt visit to them, and when supper was over, came to my help with something of my own mother's tactfulness.
"Donald," she said, "take Ellen out to the porch, and make her rest while you tell her all about Yorktown—as you told it to me while she was at the dairy; Ellen never takes time to rest unless I make her. Thomas will sit with me."
For a while we talked perfunctorily, and with embarrassed self-consciousness, like children who are bidden to be sociable; and I did describe to her the final scenes at Yorktown, but with such lack of interest in my own story—my mind all the time on other words I wished to speak—that there was no spirit in the narrative. Disgusted with my bungling of such an inspiring subject, I broke off abruptly, then after a silence surcharged with emotion—"Oh, heart of my heart," I asked, "have you ready the answer to my letter?"
"Almost," and there was the dear harp-like tremor in her tones, which bespoke deep feeling.