Part 15 (1/2)

”No,” he exclaimed, ”you need not go back.” Then he rose and took her hand that was cold and trembling. ”You will not go back. Let us find Miss Winn----”

”Chilian!” warned Elizabeth.

He led Cynthia from the room, up the stairs. Miss Winn sat there sewing.

She clasped her arms about him, he could fairly feel the throb in them.

”Oh,” she cried with a strange sort of sweetness. ”I love you. You are so good to me, and I have told you just the truth.”

Then she buried her face on Miss Winn's bosom.

Chilian went downstairs. He laughed, yet he was deeply touched by her audacity and bravery.

”Elizabeth,” he announced; ”I will see Mrs. Wilby. Let the matter die out, do not refer to it. I did not think it quite the school for her. We will find something else.”

”Chilian, I must make one effort for you and her. Going on this way will be her ruin. I should insist upon her going back to school and apologizing to Mrs. Wilby. I wouldn't let a chit like that order what a household of grown people should do and make them bow down to her. You will be sorry for it in the end. You have had no experience with children, you have seen so few. And a man hasn't the judgment----”

His usually serene temper was getting ruffled, and with such characters the end is often obstinacy.

”If she is to make a disturbance here, become a bone of contention with us, I will send her away. Cousin Giles is taking a great interest in her. There are good boarding-schools in Boston, or she and Miss Winn could have a home together under his supervision. There is enough to provide for them.”

”And you would turn her over to that half-heathen woman!” in a horrified tone. ”Then I wash my hands of the matter. Send her to perdition, if you will.”

CHAPTER VII

CHANGEFUL LIGHTS OF CHILDHOOD

Elizabeth Leverett busied herself about the supper. She felt as one does in the threatening of a thunderstorm, when the clouds roll up and the rumbling is low and distant and one studies the sky with presentiments.

Then it comes nearer, flirts a little with the elements, breaks open and shows the blue that the scurrying wind soon hides and the real storm bursts. She had believed all along that it must come.

She was not an ungracious or a selfish woman outside of her own home.

She was good to the sick and the needy, she gave of her time and strength. In the home there was a sense of owners.h.i.+p, of the self-appropriation so often termed duty. Everything had gone on smoothly for years. She had settled that Chilian would not marry. Such a bookish man, whose interests lay chiefly with men, did not need a wife when there was some one at hand to make him comfortable. And that he surely was. He understood and enjoyed it. He had only to suggest to have. Her affection for him was like that for a younger brother. Even Eunice could not minister so well for his comfort, though, like Mary of Bible lore, she often added a delicate pleasure in listening to matters or incidents that interested him.

Elizabeth had settled to the idea of a little heathen soul that she was to lead aright. Missionary work in G.o.dless lands had not made much advance and, having no mother, who was there to warn her of the great peril of her soul? Seafaring men were not much given to thought of the other world. Perhaps there was some grace for them in the hours of peril, she had heard they prayed to G.o.d in an extremity; and there was the dying thief. But on land no one had a right to count on this.

The child had changed everything. Even Eunice seemed to have lost the sharp distinction. Miss Winn belonged to the unG.o.dly, that was clear--though she was upright, honest, neat, and in some ways sensible.

But her ideas about the child were foreign and reprehensible--dangerous even. The child was no worse than others, not as bad as some, for she had either by nature or training a delicate respect for the property of others. She never meddled. She asked few questions even when she stood by the kitchen table and watched the mysteries of cake and pie making and the delicacies of cooking. It was the right to herself that annoyed Elizabeth. People had hardly begun to suspect that children had any rights.

”But if she went away? If she was swallowed up in the vortex of the more populous city”--greater, Salem would not have admitted. ”If the child's soul was finally lost, would she be quite clear? Would she have done all that she could for her salvation?”

She thought of it as she prepared the supper. She surveyed the inviting-looking table and then rang the bell. Eunice brought in a handful of flowers. Chilian came--and Miss Winn.

”Cynthia has gone to bed, she does not want any supper,” was her quiet announcement.

Elizabeth would have sent her to bed supperless, and approved of a severer punishment.

Miss Winn asked some questions about Boston.