Excerpt
Chapter One. The last Night in the Old Home.
“Which speaks the truth - fair Hope or ghastly Fear? God knoweth, and not I.Only, o’er both, Love holds her torch aloft, And will, until I die.”
“Fiddle-de-dee! Do give over snuffing and snivelling and sobbing, and tell me if you want your warm petticoat in the saddle-bag. You’d make a saint for to swear!” More sobs, and one or two disjointed words, were all that came in answer. The sobbing sister, who was the younger of the pair, wore widow’s mourning, and was seated in a rocking-chair near the window of a small, but very comfortable parlour. Her complexion was pale and sallow, her person rather slightly formed, and her whole appearance that of a frail, weak little woman, who required perpetual care and shielding. The word require has two senses, and it is here used in both. She needed it, and she exacted it.
The elder sister, who stood at the parlour door, was about as unlike the younger as could well be. She was quite a head taller, rosy-cheeked, sturdily-built, and very brisk in her motions. Disjointed though her sister’s words were, she took them up at once.
“You’ll have your thrum hat, did you say? (Note 1.) Where’s the good of crying over it? You’ve got ne’er a thing to cry for.”
Another little rush of sobs replied, amid which a quick ear could detect the words “unfeeling” and “me a poor widow.”
“Unfeeling, marry!” said the elder sister. “I’m feeling a whole warm petticoat for you. And tears won’t ward off either cramp or rheumatism, my dear—don’t think it; but a warm petticoat may. Will you have it, or no?”
“Oh, as you please!” was the answer, in a tone which might have suited arrangements for the speaker’s funeral.
“Then I please to put it in the saddle-bag,” cheerily responded the elder. “Lettice, come with me, maid. I can find thee work above in the chamber.”
A slight sound behind the screen, at the farther end of the parlour, which sheltered the widow from any draught proceeding from the window, was followed by the appearance of a young girl not hitherto visible. She was just eighteen years of age, and resembled neither of the elder ladies, being handsomer than either of them had ever been, yet not sufficiently so to be termed beautiful. A clear complexion, rosy but not florid, golden-brown hair and plenty of it, dark grey eyes shaded by dark lashes, and a pleasing, good-humoured, not self-conscious expression—this was Lettice, who said in a clear musical voice, “Yes, Aunt,” and stood ready for further orders.
As the door shut upon the aunt and niece, the former said, as if to the sister left behind in the parlour—
“A poor widow! Ay, forsooth, poor soul, that you are! for you have made of your widowhood so black a pall that you cannot see God’s blue sky through it. Dear heart, but why ever they called her Faith, and me Temperance! I’ve well-nigh as little temperance as she has faith, and neither of them would break a cat’s back.”
By this time they were up in the bedchamber; and Lettice was kept busy folding, pinning, tying up, and smoothing out one garment after another, until at last her aunt said—
“Now, Lettice, bring thine own gear, such as thou wilt need till we light at Minster Lovel, for there can we shift our baggage....