Part 63 (2/2)

”You have been a real help to your father, Edith,” said Mrs. Harley.

”Now you have done so well with Aunt Rachel, we may feel that you are provided for, and I am sure you will be glad to think that your little brothers and sisters will have many things they must have gone without if you had had to be considered too.”

[Sidenote: A Trying Time]

Edith felt rewarded then for all it had cost her to please her aunt and work quietly on at Silchester, and she went back to Ivy House with all her good resolutions strengthened, and her love for the dear ones at home stronger than ever.

For a while things went on without much change. The wild, country girl was fast growing into a graceful accomplished young woman, when two events happened which caused her a great deal of thought and anxiety.

First, Aunt Rachel, who had all her life enjoyed excellent health, fell rather seriously ill. She had a sharp attack of bronchitis, and instead of terminating in two or three weeks, as she confidently expected, the disease lingered about her, and at last settled into a chronic form, and made her quite an invalid.

Both Edith and Stimson had a hard time while Miss Harley was at the worst. Unaccustomed to illness, she proved a very difficult patient, and kept niece and maid continually running up and downstairs, and ministering to her real and fancied wants.

The warm, shut-up room where she now spent so many hours tried Edith greatly, and she longed inexpressibly sometimes for the free air of her dear Winchcomb fields, and the open doors and windows of the old house at home. Life at Silchester had always been trying to her; it became much more so when she had to devote herself constantly to an exacting invalid, who never seemed to think that young minds and eyes and hands needed rest and recreation--something over and above continued work and study.

Even when she was almost too ill to listen, Aunt Rachel insisted on the hours of daily reading; she made Edith get through long tasks of household needlework, and, to use her own expression, ”kept her niece to her duties” quite as rigidly in sickness as in health.

Then, when it seemed to Edith that she really must give up, and pet.i.tion for at least a few weeks at home, came a letter from her father, containing some very surprising news. A distant relative had died, and quite unexpectedly had left Dr. Harley a considerable legacy.

”I am very glad to tell you,” wrote her father, ”that I shall now be relieved from all the pecuniary anxieties that have pressed upon me so heavily for the last few years. Your mother and I would now be very glad to have you home again, unless you feel that you are better and happier where you are. We owe your Aunt Rachel very many thanks for all her kindness, but we think she will agree that, now the chief reason for your absence from home is removed, your right place is with your brothers and sisters.”

To go home! How delightful it would be! That was Edith's first thought; but others quickly followed. What would Aunt Rachel say? Would she really be sorry to lose her niece, or would she perhaps feel relieved of a troublesome charge, and glad to be left alone with her faithful Stimson, as she had been before?

”I must speak to my aunt about it at once,” thought Edith. ”And no doubt papa will write to her too.”

But when she went into the garden, where her aunt was venturing to court the suns.h.i.+ne, she found her actually in tears.

”Your father has written me a most unfeeling letter,” said the poor lady, sitting on a seat, and before Edith could utter a word. ”Because he is better off he wants to take you away. He seems not to think in the least of my lonely state, or that I may have grown attached to you, but suggests that you should return home as soon as we can arrange it, without the least regard for my feelings.”

”Papa would never think you cared so much, Aunt Rachel. Would you really rather I should stay, then?”

”Child, I could never go back to my old solitary life again. I did not mean to tell you, and perhaps I am not wise to do so now, but I will say it, Edith--I have grown to love you, my dear, and if you love me, you will not think of going away and leaving me to illness and solitude.

Your father and mother have all their other children--I have nothing and no one but you. Promise that you will stay with me?”

[Sidenote: ”I have Grown to Love you!”]

”I must think about it, aunt,” said Edith, much moved by her aunt's words. ”Oh, do not think me ungrateful, but it will be very hard for me to decide; and perhaps papa will not let me decide for myself.”

But when Edith, in her own room, came to consider all her aunt's claim, it really seemed that she had no right, at least if her parents would consent to her remaining, to abandon one who had done so much for her.

It was, indeed, as she had said, a very difficult choice; there was the old, happy, tempting life at Winchcomb, the pleasant home where she might now return, and live with the dear brothers and sisters without feeling herself a burden upon her father's strained resources; and there was the quiet monotonous daily round at Ivy House, the exacting invalid, the uncongenial work, the lack of all young companions.h.i.+p, that already seemed so hard to bear.

And yet, Edith thought, she really ought to stay. Wonderful as it seemed, Aunt Rachel had grown to love her. How could she say to the lonely, stricken woman, ”I will go, and leave you alone”?

”Well, Edith?” said Miss Harley eagerly, when her niece came in again after a prolonged absence.

”I will stay, Aunt Rachel, if my father will let me. I feel that I cannot--ought not--to leave you after all that you have done for me.”

So it was settled, after some demur on Dr. Harley's part, and the quiet humdrum days went on again, and Edith found out how, as the poet says--

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