Chapter 19

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_ Chapter XIX

The very next day, which was Saturday, and consequently a holiday, Maria went on the trolley to Westbridge, which was a provincial city about six miles from Amity. She proposed buying some clothing for Jessy Ramsey with the ten dollars which George Ramsey had given her. Her aunt Eunice accompanied her.

"George Ramsey goes over to Westbridge on the trolley," said Eunice, as they jolted along--the cars were very well equipped, but the road was rough--"and I shouldn't wonder if he was on our car coming back."

Maria colored quickly and looked out of the window. The cars were constructed like those on steam railroads, with seats facing towards the front, and Maria's aunt had insisted upon her sitting next to the window because the view was in a measure new to her. She had not been over the road many times since she had come to Amity. She stared out at the trimly kept country road, lined with cheap Queen Anne houses and the older type of New England cottages and square frame houses, and it all looked strange to her after the red soil and the lapse towards Southern ease and shiftlessness of New Jersey. But nothing that she looked upon was as strange as the change in her own heart. Maria, from being of an emotional nature, had many times considered herself as being in love, young as she was, but this was different. When her aunt Eunice spoke of George Ramsey she felt a rigid shiver from head to foot. It seemed to her that she could not see him nor speak to him, that she could not return to Amity on the same car. She made no reply at first to her aunt's remark, but finally she said, in a faint voice, that she supposed Mr. Ramsey came home after bank hours at three o'clock.

"He comes home a good deal later than that, as a general thing," said Eunice. "Oftener than not I see him get off the car at six o'clock. I guess he stays and works after bank hours. George Ramsey is a worker, if there ever was one. He's a real likely young man."

Maria felt Eunice's eyes upon her, and realized that she was thinking, as her aunt Maria had done, that George Ramsey would be a good match for her. A sort of desperation seized upon her.

"I don't know what you mean by likely," Maria said, impertinently, in her shame and defiance.

"Don't know what I mean by likely?"

"No, I don't. People in New Jersey don't say likely."

"Why, I mean he is a good young man, and likely to turn out well," responded Eunice, rather helplessly. She was a very gentle woman, and had all her life been more or less intimidated by her husband's and sister-in-laws' more strenuous natures; and, if the truth were told, she stood in a little awe of this blooming young niece, with her self-possession and clothes of the New York fashion.

"I don't see why he is more _likely_, as you call it, than any other young man," Maria returned, pitilessly. "I should call him a very ordinary young man."

"He isn't called so generally," Eunice said, feebly.

They were about half an hour reaching Westbridge. Eunice by that time had plucked up a little spirit. She reflected that Maria knew almost nothing about the shopping district, and she herself had shopped there all her life since she had been of shopping age. Eunice had a great respect for the Westbridge stores, and considered them distinctly superior to those of Boston. She was horrified when Maria observed, shortly before they got off the car, that she supposed they could have done much better in Boston.

"I guess you will find that Adams & Wood's is as good a store as any you could go to in New York," said Eunice. "Then there is the Boston Store, too, and Collins & Green's. All of them are very good, and they have a good assortment. Hardly anybody in Amity goes anywhere else shopping, they think the Westbridge stores so much better."

"Of course it is cheaper to come here," said Maria, as they got off the car in front of Adams & Wood's.

"That isn't the reason," said Eunice, eagerly. "Why, Mrs. Judge Saunders buys 'most everything here; says she can do enough sight better than she can anywhere else."

"If the dress Mrs. Saunders had on at the church supper was a sample, she dresses like a perfect guy," said Maria, as they entered the store, with its two pretentious show-windows filled with waxen ladies dressed in the height of the fashion, standing in the midst of symmetrically arranged handkerchiefs and rugs.

Maria knew that she was even cruelly pert to her aunt, but she felt like stinging--like crowding some of the stings out of her own heart. She asked herself was ever any girl so horribly placed as she was, married, and not married; and now she had seen some one else whom she must shun and try to hate, although she wished to love him. Maria felt instinctively, remembering the old scenes over the garden fence, and remembering how she herself had looked that very day as she started out, with her puffy blue velvet turban rising above the soft roll of her fair hair and her face blooming through a film of brown lace, and also remembering George Ramsey's tone as he asked if he might call, that if she were free that things might happen with her as with other girls; that she and George Ramsey might love each other, and become engaged; that she might save her school money for a trousseau, and by-and-by be married to a man of whom she should be very proud. The patches on George Ramsey's trousers became very dim to her. She admired him from the depths of her heart.

"I guess we had better look at flannels first," Eunice said. "It won't do to get all wool, aside from the expense, for with that Ramsey woman's washing it wouldn't last any time."

She and her aunt made most of their purchases in Adams & Wood's. They succeeded in obtaining quite a comfortable little outfit for Jessy Ramsey, and at last boarded a car laden with packages. Eunice had a fish-net bag filled to overflowing, but Maria, who, coming from the vicinity of New York, looked down on bags, carried her parcels in her arms.

Directly they were seated in the car Eunice gave Maria a violent nudge with her sharp elbow. "He's on this car," she whispered in her ear, with a long hiss which seemed to penetrate the girl's brain.

Maria made an impatient movement.

"Don't you think you ought to just step over and thank him?" whispered Eunice. "I'll hold your bundles. He's on the other side, a seat farther back. He raised his hat to me."

"Hush! I can't here."

"Well, all right, but I thought it would look sort of polite," said Eunice. Then she subsided. Once in a while she glanced back at George Ramsey, then uneasily at her niece, but she said nothing more.

The car was crowded. Workmen smelling of leather clung to the straps. One, in the aisle next Maria, who sat on the outside this time, leaned fairly against her. He was a good-looking young fellow, but he had a heavy jaw. He held an unlighted pipe in his mouth, and carried a two-story tin dinner-pail. Maria kept shrinking closer to her aunt, but the young man pressed against her all the more heavily. His eyes were fixed with seeming unconsciousness ahead, but a furtive smile lurked around his mouth.

George Ramsey was watching. All at once he arose and quietly and unobtrusively came forward, insinuated himself with a gentle force between Maria and the workman, and spoke to her. The workman muttered something under his breath, but moved aside. He gave an ugly glance at George, who did not seem to see him at all. Presently he sat down in George's vacated seat beside another man, who said something to him with a coarse chuckle. The man growled in response, and continued to scowl furtively at George, who stood talking to Maria. He said something about the fineness of the day, and Maria responded rather gratefully. She was conscious of an inward tumult which alarmed her, and made her defiant both at the young man and herself, but she could not help responding to the sense of protection which she got from his presence. She had not been accustomed to anything like the rudeness of the young workman. In New Jersey caste was more clearly defined. Here it was not defined at all. An employe in a shoe-factory had not the slightest conception that he was not the social equal of a school-teacher, and indeed in many cases he was. There were by no means all like this one, whose mere masculine estate filled him with entire self-confidence where women were concerned. In a sense his ignorance was pathetic. He had honestly thought that the pretty, strange girl must like his close contact, and he felt aggrieved that this other young man, who did not smell of leather and carried no dinner-pail, had ousted him. He viewed Maria's delicate profile with a sort of angry tenderness.

"Say, she's a beaut, ain't she?" whispered the man beside him, with a malicious grin, and again got a surly growl in response.

Maria finally, much to her aunt's delight, said to George that they had been shopping, and thanked him for the articles which his money had enabled them to buy.

"The poor little thing can go to school now," said Maria. There was gratitude in her voice, and yet, oddly enough, still a tinge of reproach.

"If mother and I had dreamed of the true state of affairs we would have done something before," George Ramsey said, with an accent of apology; and yet he could not see for the life of him why he should be apologetic for the poverty of these degenerate relatives of his. He could not see why he was called upon to be his brother's keeper in this case, but there was something about Maria's serious, accusing gaze of blue eyes, and her earnest voice, that made him realize that he could prostrate himself before her for uncommitted sins. Somehow, Maria made him feel responsible for all that he might have done wrong as well as his actual wrong-doing, although he laughed at himself for his mental attitude. Suddenly a thought struck him. "When are you going to take all these things (how you ever managed to get so much for ten dollars I don't understand) to the child?" he asked, eagerly.

Maria replied, unguardedly, that she intended to take them after supper that night. "Then she will have them all ready for Monday," she said.

"Then let me go with you and carry the parcels," George Ramsey said, eagerly.

Maria stiffened. "Thank you," she said, "but Uncle Henry is going with me, and there is no need."

Maria felt her aunt Eunice give a sudden start and make an inarticulate murmur of remonstrance, then she checked herself. Maria knew that her uncle walked a mile from his factory to save car-fare; she knew also that she was telling what was practically an untruth, since she had made no agreement with her uncle to accompany her.

"I should be happy to go with you," said George Ramsey, in a boyish, abashed voice.

Maria said nothing more. She looked past her aunt out of the window. The full moon was rising, and all at once all the girl's sweet light of youthful romance appeared again above her mental horizon. She felt that it would be almost heaven to walk with George Ramsey in that delicious moonlight, in the clear, frosty air, and take little Jessy Ramsey her gifts. Maria was of an almost abnormal emotional nature, although there was little that was material about the emotion. She dreamed of that walk as she might have dreamed of a walk with a fairy prince through fairy-land, and her dream was as innocent, but it unnerved her. She said again, in a tremulous voice, that she was very much obliged, and murmured something again about her uncle Henry; and George Ramsey replied, with a certain sober dignity, that he should have been very happy.

Soon after that the car stopped to let off some passengers, and George moved to a vacant seat in front. He did not turn around again. Maria looked at his square shoulders and again gazed past her aunt at the full orb of the moon rising with crystalline splendor in the pale amber of the east. There was a clear gold sunset which sent its reflection over the whole sky.

Presently, Eunice spoke in her little, deprecating voice, which had a slight squeak.

"Did you speak to your uncle Henry about going with you this evening?" she asked.

"No, I didn't," admitted Maria, reddening, "but I knew he would be willing."

"I suppose he will be," said Eunice. "But he does get home awful tuckered out Saturday nights, and he always takes his bath Saturday nights, too."

Eunice looked out of the window with a slight frown. She adored her husband, and the thought of that long walk for him on his weary Saturday evening, and the possible foregoing of his bath, troubled her.

"I don't believe George Ramsey liked it," she whispered, after a little.

"I can't help it if he didn't," replied Maria. "I can't go with him, Aunt Eunice."

As they jolted along, Maria made up her mind that she would not ask her uncle to go with her at all; that she would slip out unknown to Aunt Maria and ask the girl who lived in the house on the other side, Lily Merrill, to go with her. She thought that two girls need not be afraid, and she could start early.

As she parted from her aunt Eunice at the door of the house, after they had left the car (Eunice's door was on the side where the Ramseys lived, and Maria's on the Merrill side), she told her of her resolution.

"Don't say anything to Uncle Henry about going with me," said she.

"Why, what are you going to do?"

"I'll get Lily Merrill. I know she won't mind."

Maria and Lily Merrill had been together frequently since Maria had come to Amity, and Eunice accounted them as intimate. She looked hesitatingly a second at her niece, then she said, with an evident air of relief:

"Well, I don't know but you can. It's bright moonlight, and it's late in the season for tramps. I don't see why you two girls can't go together, if you start early."

"We'll start right after supper," said Maria.

"I would," said Eunice, still with an air of relief.

Maria took her aunt's fish-net bag, as well as her own parcels, and carried them around to her aunt Maria's side of the house, and deposited them on the door-step. There was a light in the kitchen, and she could see her aunt Maria's shadow moving behind the curtain, preparing supper. Then she ran across the yard, over the frozen furrows of a last year's garden, and knocked at the side-door of the Merrill house.

Lily herself opened the door, and gave a little, loving cry of surprise. "Why, is it you, dear?" she said.

"Yes. I want to know if you can go over the river with me to-night on an errand?"

"Over the river? Where?"

"Oh, only to Jessy Ramsey's. Aunt Eunice and I have been to Westbridge and bought these things for her, and I want to carry them to her to-night. I thought maybe you would go with me."

Lily hesitated. "It's a pretty lonesome walk," said she, "and there are an awful set of people on the other side of the river."

"Oh, nonsense!" cried Maria. "You aren't afraid--we two together--and it's bright moonlight, as bright as day."

"Yes, I know it is," replied Lily, gazing out at the silver light which flooded everything, but she still hesitated. A light in the house behind gave her a background of light. She was a beautiful girl, prettier than Maria, taller, and with a timid, pliant grace. Her brown hair tossed softly over her big, brown eyes, which were surmounted by strongly curved eyebrows, her nose was small, and her mouth, and she had a fascinating little way of holding her lips slightly parted, as if ready for a loving word or a kiss. Everybody said that Lily Merrill had a beautiful disposition, albeit some claimed that she lacked force. Maria dominated her, although she did not herself know it. Lily continued to hesitate with her beautiful, startled brown eyes on Maria's face.

"Aren't you afraid?" she said.

"Afraid? No. What should I be afraid of? Why, it's bright moonlight! I would just as soon go at night as in the daytime when the moon is bright."

"That is an awful man who lives at the Ramseys'!"

"Nonsense! I guess if he tried to bother us, Mrs. Ramsey would take care of him," said Maria. "Come along, Lily. I would ask Uncle Henry, but it is the night when he takes his bath, and he comes home tired."

"Well, I'll go if mother will let me," said Lily.

Then Lily called to her mother, who came to the sitting-room door in response.

"Mother," said Lily, "Maria wants me to go over to the Ramseys', those on the other side of the river, after supper, and carry these things to Jessy."

"Aren't you afraid?" asked Lily's mother, as Lily herself had done. She was a faded but still pretty woman who had looked like her daughter in her youth. She was a widow with some property, enough for her Lily and herself to live on in comfort.

"Why, it's bright moonlight, Mrs. Merrill," said Maria, "and the Ramseys live just the other side of the river."

"Well, if Lily isn't afraid, I don't care," said Mrs. Merrill. She had an ulterior motive for her consent, of which neither of the two girls suspected her. She was smartly dressed, and her hair was carefully crimped, and she had, as always in the evening, hopes that a certain widower, the resident physician of Amity, Dr. Ellridge, might call. He had noticed her several times at church suppers, and once had walked home with her from an evening meeting. Lily never dreamed that her mother had aspirations towards a second husband. Her father had been dead ten years; the possibility of any one in his place had never occurred to her; then, too, she looked upon her mother as entirely too old for thoughts of that kind. But Mrs. Merrill had her own views, which she kept concealed behind her pretty, placid exterior. She always welcomed the opportunity of being left alone of an evening, because she realized the very serious drawback that the persistent presence of a pretty, well-grown daughter might be if a wooer would wish to woo. She knew perfectly well that if Dr. Ellridge called, Lily would wonder why he called, and would sit all the evening in the same room with her fancy-work, entirely unsuspicious. Lily might even think he came to see her. Mrs. Merrill had a measure of slyness and secrecy which her daughter did not inherit. Lily was not brilliant, but she was as entirely sweet and open as the flower for which she was named. She was emotional, too, with an innocent emotionlessness, and very affectionate. Mrs. Merrill made almost no objection to Lily's going with Maria, but merely told her to wrap up warmly when she went out. Lily looked charming, with a great fur boa around her long, slender throat, and red velvet roses nestling under the brim of her black hat against the soft puff of her brown hair. She bent over her mother and kissed her.

"I hope you won't be very lonesome, mother dear," she said.

Mrs. Merrill blushed a little. To-night she had confident hopes of the doctor's calling; she had even resolved upon a coup. "Oh no, I shall not be lonesome," she replied. "Norah isn't going out, you know."

"We shall not be gone long, anyway," Lily said, as she went out. She had not even noticed her mother's blush. She was not very acute. She ran across the yard, the dry grass of which shone like a carpet of crisp silver in the moonlight, and knocked on Maria's door. Maria answered her knock. She was all ready, and she had her aunt Eunice's fish-net bag and her armful of parcels.

"Here, let me take some of them, dear," said Lily, in her cooing voice, and she gathered up some of the parcels under her long, supple arm.

Maria's aunt Maria followed her to the door. "Now, mind you don't go into that house," said she. "Just leave the things and run right home; and if you see anybody who looks suspicious, go right up to a house and knock. I don't feel any too safe about you two girls going, anyway."

Aunt Maria spoke in a harsh, croaking voice; she had a cold. Maria seized her by the shoulders and pushed her back, laughingly.

"You go straight in the house," said she. "And don't you worry. Lily and I both have hat-pins, and we can both run, and there's nothing to be afraid of, anyway."

"Well, I don't half like the idea," croaked Aunt Maria, retreating.

Lily and Maria went on their way. Lily looked affectionately at her companion, whose pretty face gained a singular purity of beauty from the moonlight.

"How good you are, dear," she said.

"Nonsense!" replied Maria. Somehow all at once the consciousness of her secret, which was always with her, like some hidden wound, stung her anew. She thought suddenly how Lily would not think her good at all if she knew what an enormous secret she was hiding from her, of what duplicity she was guilty.

"Yes, you are good," said Lily, "to take all this trouble to get that poor little thing clothes."

"Oh, as for that," said Maria, "Mr. George Ramsey is the one to be thanked. It was his money that bought the things, you know."

"He is good, too," said Lily, and her voice was like a song with cadences of tenderness.

Maria started and glanced at her, then looked away again. A qualm of jealousy, of which she was ashamed, seized her. She gave her head a toss, and repeated, with a sort of defiance, "Yes, he is good enough, I suppose."

"I think you are real sweet," said Lily, "and I do think George Ramsey is splendid."

"I don't see anything very remarkable about him," said Maria.

"Don't you think he is handsome?"

"I don't know. I don't suppose I ever think much about a man being handsome. I don't like handsome men, anyway. I don't like men, anyway, when it comes to that."

"George Ramsey is very nice," said Lily, and there was an accent in her speech which made the other girl glance at her. Lily's face was turned aside, although she was clinging close to Maria's arm, for she was in reality afraid of being out in the night with another girl.

They walked along in silence after that. When they came to the covered bridge which crossed the river, Lily forced Maria into a run until they reached the other side.

"It is awful in here," she said, in a fearful whisper.

Maria laughed. She herself did not feel the least fear, although she was more imaginative than the other girl. At that time a kind of rage against life itself possessed her which made her insensible to ordinary fear. She felt that she had been hardly used, and she was, in a measure, at bay. She knew that she could fight anything until she died, and beyond that there was nothing certainly to fear. She had become abnormal because of her strained situation as regarded society. However, she ran because Lily wished her to do so, and they soon emerged from the dusty tunnel of the bridge, with its strong odor of horses, and glimpses between the sides of the silver current of the river, into the moon-flooded road.

After the bridge came the school-house, then, a half-mile beyond that, the Ramsey house. The front windows were blazing with light, and the sound of a loud, drunken voice came from within.

Lily shrank and clung closely to Maria.

"Oh, Maria, I am awfully afraid to go to the door," she whispered. "Just hear that. Eugene Ramsey must be home drunk, and--and perhaps the other man, too. I am afraid. Don't let's go there."

Maria looked about her. "You see that board fence, then?" she said to Lily, and as she spoke she pointed to a high board fence on the other side of the street, which was completely in shadow.

"Yes."

"Well, if you are afraid, just go and stand straight against the fence. You will be in shadow, and if you don't move nobody can possibly see you. Then I will go to the door and leave the things."

"Oh, Maria, aren't you afraid?"

"No, I am not a bit afraid."

"You won't go in, honest?"

"No, I won't go in. Run right over there."

Lily released her hold of Maria's arm and made a fluttering break for the fence, against which she shrank and became actually invisible as a shadow. Maria marched up to the Ramsey door and knocked loudly. Mrs. Ramsey came to the door, and Maria thrust the parcels into her hands and began pulling them rapidly out of the fish-net bag. Mrs. Ramsey cast a glance behind her at the lighted room, through which was visible the same man whom Maria had seen before, and also another, and swung the door rapidly together, so that she stood in the dark entry, only partly lighted by the moonlight.

"I have brought some things for Jessy to wear to school, Mrs. Ramsey," said Maria.

"Thank you," Mrs. Ramsey mumbled, doubtfully, with still another glance at the closed door, through which shone lines and chinks of light.

"There are enough for her to be warmly clothed, and you will see to it that she has them on, won't you?" said Maria. Her voice was quite sweet and ingratiating, and not at all patronizing.

Suddenly the woman made a clutch at her arm. "You are a good young one, doin' so much for my young one," she whispered. "Now you'd better git up and git. They've been drinkin'. Git!"

"You will see that Jessy has the things to wear Monday, won't you?" said Maria.

"Sure." Suddenly the woman wiped her eyes and gave a maudlin sob. "You're a good young one," she whimpered. "Now, git."

Maria ran across the road as the door closed after her. She did not know that Mrs. Ramsey had given the parcels which she had brought a toss into another room, and when she entered the room in which the men were carousing and was asked who had come to the door, had replied, "The butcher for his bill," to be greeted with roars of laughter. She did, indeed, hear the roars of laughter. Lily slunk along swiftly beside the fence by her side. Maria caught her by the arm. Curiously enough, while she was not afraid for herself, she did feel a little fear now for her companion. The two girls hurried until they reached the bridge, and ran the whole length. On the other side, coming into the lighted main street of Amity, they felt quite safe.

"Did you see any of those dreadful men?" gasped Lily.

"I just caught a glimpse of them, then Mrs. Ramsey shut the door," said Maria.

"They were drunk, weren't they?"

"I shouldn't wonder."

"I do think it was an awful place to go to," said Lily, with a little sigh of relief that she was out of it.

The girls went along the street until they reached the Ramsey house, next the one where Maria lived. Suddenly a man's figure appeared from the gate. It was almost as if he had been watching.

"Good-evening," he said, and the girls saw that he was George Ramsey.

"Good-evening, Mr. Ramsey," responded Maria. She felt Lily's arm tremble in hers. George walked along with them. "I have been to carry the presents which I bought with your money," said Maria.

"Good heavens! You don't mean that you two girls have been all alone up there?" said George.

"Why, yes," said Maria. "Why not?"

"Weren't you afraid?"

"Maria isn't afraid of anything," Lily's sweet, little, tremulous voice piped on the other side.

George was walking next Maria. There was a slight and very gentle accusation in the voice.

"It wasn't safe," said George, soberly, "and I should have been glad to go with you."

Maria laughed. "Well, here we are, safe and sound," she said. "I didn't see anything to be much afraid of."

"All the same, they are an awful set there," said George. They had reached Maria's door, and he added, "Suppose you walk along with me, Miss Edgham, and I will see Lily home." George had been to school with Lily, and had always called her by her first name.

Maria again felt that little tremor of Lily's arm in hers, and did not understand it. "All right," she said.

The three walked to Lily's door, and had said good-night, when Lily, who was, after all, the daughter of her mother, although her little artifices were few and innocent, had an inspiration. She discovered that she had lost her handkerchief.

"I think I took it out when we reached your gate, Mr. Ramsey," she said, timidly, for she felt guilty.

It was quite true that the handkerchief was not in her muff, in which she had carried it, but there was a pocket in her coat which she did not investigate.

They turned back, looking along the frozen ground.

"Never mind," Lily said, cheerfully, when they had reached the Ramsey gate and returned to the Edgham's, and the handkerchief was not forthcoming, "it was an old one, anyway. Good-night."

She knew quite well that George Edgham would do what he did--walk home with her the few steps between her house and Maria's, and that Maria would not hesitate to say good-night and enter her own door.

"I guess I had better go right in," said Maria. "Aunt Maria has a cold, and she may worry and be staying up."

Lily was entirely happy at walking those few steps with George Ramsey. He had pulled her little hand through his arm in a school-boy sort of fashion. He left her at the door with a friendly good-night, but she had got what she wanted. He had not gone those few steps alone with Maria. Lily loved Maria, but she did not want George Ramsey to love her.

When Lily entered the house, to her great astonishment she found Dr. Ellridge there. He was seated beside her mother, who was lying on the sofa.

"Why, mother, what is it--are you sick?" Lily cried, anxiously, while the doctor looked with admiration at her face, glowing with the cold.

"I had one of my attacks after supper, and sent Norah for Dr. Ellridge. I thought I had better," Mrs. Merrill explained, feebly. She sighed and looked at the doctor, who understood perfectly, but did not betray himself. He was, in fact, rather flattered.

"Yes, your mother has been feeling quite badly, but she will be all right now," he said to Lily.

"I am sorry you did not feel well, mother," Lily said, sweetly. Then she got her fancy-work from her little silk bag on the table and seated herself, after removing her wraps.

Her mother sighed. The doctor's mouth assumed a little, humorous pucker.

Lily looked at her mother with affectionate interest. She was quite accustomed to slight attacks of indigestion which her mother often had, and was not much alarmed, still she felt a little anxious. "You are sure you are better, mother?" she said.

"Oh yes, she is much better," the doctor answered for her. "There is nothing for you to be alarmed about."

"I am so glad," said Lily.

She took another stitch in her fancy-work, and her beautiful face took on an almost seraphic expression; she was thinking of George Ramsey. She hardly noticed when the doctor took his leave, and she did not in the least understand her mother's sigh when the door closed. For her the gates of love were wide open, but she had no conception that for her mother they were not shut until she should go to heaven to join her father. _

Read next: Chapter 20

Read previous: Chapter 18

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