Part 27 (1/2)

”Yes, I suppose so. It is best to go any way. Eunice wished it.”

”I am glad of one thing--I shall be gone first,” said Jabez.

”Shall you? When do you go?”

”Next week, if grandma can get my things ready. Time is precious.”

”She must let us help her,” said Fidelia; and then there was silence between them. Fidelia was thinking of a letter which she had received a day or two since, which must be answered soon. Miss Kent had written to her, inviting her to visit her in Boston for as long a time as she could stay. It was such a letter as it is good to write and to receive.

There were a few words of sympathy in her sorrow for her sister's loss, and a few more as to the pleasant things to be done and seen and enjoyed during the visit; but the best of it was the evident kindness and sincerity of the writer in all she said.

Fidelia's desire to accept the invitation had been growing since the day it came. She longed for a change of some sort, and she needed it. The thought of the seminary and her books gave her very little pleasure.

”It is because you are tired,” said Mrs Stone; but she did not, as it was her first impulse to do, remind her that it had been her sister's wish that the next year should be pa.s.sed at the seminary. ”She will think of it herself by-and-by.”

Fidelia thought of it now. ”Time is precious,” Jabez had said. Surely time ought to be precious to her as well! She ought to go to the seminary this year, if ever she meant to go; and, if so, there was no time to lose.

And, besides, she knew on which side temptation lay for her. An easy, pleasant life among people who knew no other kind of existence; a chance to see and hear and enjoy the beautiful and wonderful things of which she knew little, except from books, would be delightful; but would it be good for her? Would it be a preparation for the work of which she and Eunice used to talk and plan?--”the highest of all work,” as Jabez had called it, and ”entire consecration to G.o.d's service.”

”I must be a poor creature to have any other desire,” she told herself.

In a little Jabez said--

”Miss Eunice said something to me once. She said it made her glad to think that I might be permitted to do some of the work for the Lord which she would have been so glad to do. Does it seem presumptuous in me to say it, Fidelia? I would not say it to any one but you,” said Jabez humbly; ”and I owe everything to Miss Eunice.”

”And what do I not owe to my Eunice?” said Fidelia to herself. To Jabez she said--”Yes, I know it made her last days happy to feel that perhaps she had helped you a little. And we must both honour her memory by trying to do in the world what she would have loved to do. I only wish--”

Fidelia did not put her wish into words for Jabez's hearing. It was growing dark, and Mrs Stone's white cap at the porch door had been more than once visible as a reminder that the dew was beginning to fall; and they knew it was time to go into the house.

But Jabez had one thing more to say, over which he hesitated a moment.

”Fidelia, I want to say one thing more, if I may. It was Miss Eunice that made me think more about it, so I hope you won't be vexed. You haven't any brother, and I haven't any sister. Suppose we--adopt one another,” said Jabez, with a laugh which had the sound of a sob in it.

”Miss Eunice told me more than once, that if ever the time came when I saw you in trouble I must help you, if I had a chance, for her sake.”

”Oh, my Eunice!” cried Fidelia; and she held out her hand to the lad.

And then, to her amazement, he stooped and touched it with his lips before he took it in his own.

There were not many words spoken after that. This was their real parting. They met several times before Jabez went away; but it was this half-hour under the apple-trees that Fidelia always remembered, when the thought of Jabez came back to her, with all the other memories of these last days at home. For these were ”last days.”

Fidelia came back again when her year at the seminary was ended. Mrs Stone was still in the old brown house, which in most respects looked just as it had looked when she came home the first time, to find Eunice waiting for her. It was good to see her old friend standing to welcome her at the gate, but her old friend was not Eunice. And, though she wondered that it should be so, and grieved over it, the house in which the greater part of her life had been pa.s.sed never seemed quite like home again.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN.

FIDELIA'S PERPLEXITY.

This year in the seminary was far more profitable to Fidelia than the former year had been. The work which she had done so faithfully at home told now. She was not pressed or hurried by overwork in preparing for her cla.s.ses, and had time to take the good of other things besides study.

Under the Christian influence lovingly and judiciously exercised over them, not even the careless or unimpressionable among the pupils could remain altogether untouched by some sense of their responsibility to the Lord Jesus, or to the claims which He had on them to be workers together with Him in the world which He came to save. Fidelia, with softened heart and awakened conscience, was now open to that influence, and yielded to it as she had not done before. There was no neglect or misappropriation of the ”quiet half-hour” morning and evening now, nor of any other of the many means of grace provided for the benefit of all.

The scope and sense of all the teaching, as to duty, of the n.o.ble woman through whose labours and self-denials the seminary was founded had been--”Ye are not your own: ye are bought with a price; therefore glorify G.o.d in your body and in your spirit, which are G.o.d's.”