Part 7 (2/2)

”I think she did,” said Stella. ”I've always felt sure she did, though no one else feels just as I do about it.”

She clasped her hands about her knees, and a graver note than usual crept into her musical voice, as she went on. ”There was something like a paralytic stroke toward the end, and after that she never got up, but lay in bed, not suffering any pain, but only growing weaker every day. I was with her a great deal, and there never was any one easier to take care of. One morning I was watering the flowers in her window and I saw a cl.u.s.ter of buds, that were almost blown, on her tea rose. She was pa.s.sionately fond of flowers, and that rose was a special favorite, though it blossomed so seldom that any one else would have lost all patience with it. I knew how pleased she would be, so I took it over to her bed. 'Grandmother,' I said, 'there are some buds on your tea rose; it'll be in bloom in a day or two.' If you could have seen how her face lighted up! 'Why, why,' she said, 'my tea rose!' And then she put out her hands all of a tremble, as if she couldn't believe it without touching. I guided her dear old fingers, and she moved them over the bush as gently as if it had been a baby's face. 'Oh,' she said, 'it has blossomed so many times when something beautiful happened! Somehow, it seemed to know. It blossomed when Lucia was married, and the day your mother came home to live with you children; but I never thought it would be so now. A day or two, did you say; only a day or two more?' And then she closed her eyes with such a smile, and I heard her saying softly to herself,-

”'There everlasting spring abides, And never-withering flowers.'

”Her mind wandered a little all that day and the next, and she never once spoke of leaving us, but she slipped away at night as quietly as going to sleep, and in the morning the rose was in bloom. I told grandfather about it afterward, but he didn't attach any significance to it at all. In fact, I think he felt a little mortified, and he said if she had realized that she was on the brink of eternity she wouldn't have been thinking about a rose.”

She was silent a minute, then added: ”In one way I don't know but grandmother's prayer was answered after all, for grandfather seemed different after her death. He has been more considerate of us all, and we-yes, I guess we've tried harder to be good to him. We couldn't help it when we remembered how patient she always was.”

The chirping of the crickets seemed to grow fuller and gladder in the summer stillness, and the notes of the whippoorwill came with yet mellower call. It was as if the influence of a sweet, unselfish, loving spirit filled the place, and somehow it did not seem to Esther Northmore at that moment a poor or paltry thing to have lived and died one of the common throng.

CHAPTER V

AUNT KATHARINE SAXON

In the privacy of their room that night Kate confided to Esther two resolutions. The first was that she would not again, during her stay at her grandfather's, needlessly expose her ignorance of any point of Bible history: ”For if we're going to get mother into disgrace, and make him think she never taught us anything about it, it'll be a pretty business,” she ended with feeling.

To this Esther gave cordial a.s.sent, but she was not so sure of Kate's wisdom in the other matter; for the girl, with her usual penetration, had guessed that the Eastern relatives held a somewhat exalted opinion of the superiority of New England to the rest of the United States, and announced her intention of correcting it to the best of her ability.

Esther, whose loyalty to her own section was not of a combative sort, suggested mildly that people's opinions about things didn't alter them, and that the grandfather, at his advanced age, should at least be left to the enjoyment of any prejudices he might have in favor of his native section.

But the allusion to his age should have been omitted. Kate shook her head at this, and declared that he of all others was the one not to be spared. Was it not his pride and boast that time had not robbed him of either mental or physical vigor? No, no; she should not hold herself debarred from supplying him with new ideas on any subject. It was only when he stood on Bible ground that she should let him alone.

It was evident the next morning that on this ground he did not intend to let her alone, for at family prayers he read the pathetic story of David's flight from his unworthy son, and his eyes sought hers for a moment with pointed meaning as he paused on the name of the loyal friend whose swift generosity remembered the fugitives, ”hungry and weary and thirsty in the wilderness,” and who of good right met them again with rejoicing in their hour of victory.

The quaint old story held the girl's absorbed attention to the end. She wished it were longer, and told her grandfather so after breakfast, adding that the way he read the Old Testament made it more interesting than common.

He received the compliment with complacence. ”Well,” he said, ”I guess I do read it better than some folks. I guess I'm a little like those men in the days of Ezra the scribe, who stood up before the people, and 'read in the law of G.o.d distinctly, and gave the sense, and caused them to understand.'”

Kate privately wondered how many more people in the Bible her grandfather resembled, but she refrained from suggesting the query, lest he should claim her attention at once for the whole list.

It was while they sat at table that morning that he said, looking at her with the sudden lighting of face which marks a mental discovery: ”It's your great-aunt Katharine that you put me in mind of. I knew there was somebody. It ain't your looks so much; but a way you have.”

”Oh, grandfather, how can you?” cried Stella. ”Kate, you won't thank him much for that when you know Aunt Katharine.”

”She's the one I was named for, I suppose,” said Kate. ”I've heard mother tell about her. Well, if she's disagreeable, there won't be any love lost between us on account of the name. I never did like it particularly.”

”Disagreeable!” cried Stella, ”why, she's the queerest, most cross-grained, cantankerous-”

”Stella! Stella!” said her mother, severely. ”Why will you prejudice your cousins against your poor Aunt Katharine?”

”My poor Aunt Katharine will do it herself quick enough,” said Stella.

”Oh, yes,” she added with a little shrug, as she saw her mother's lips parting again, ”my mother's going to tell you that Aunt Katharine has had a great deal in her life to try her, and that she is really a remarkably bright and capable woman. It's perfectly true; and several other things are true besides.”

”The trouble with my sister Katharine,” said Ruel Saxon, setting down his cup of tea, which he had been drinking so hot that every swallow was accompanied by an upward jerk of the head and a facial contortion, ”the trouble with Katharine Saxon don't lay in her nat'ral faculties. It lays in a stiff-necked and perverse disposition. When she gets a notion into her head she won't change it for anybody, and she's wiser in her own conceit than 'seven men that can render a reason.'”

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