48 THE STORY OF MAGGIE.
more, and make him say new things to her; and what she wanted, she told them, was not to hear one more unpleasant word spoken in her home; she did not want to have one more to think about now, or after she was gone.
It caused them many misgivings. The mother’s heart ached with pity for her child. So did Anna’s; and Charley was so brotherly in his attentions, so helpful, as to seal her gratitude forever. She could praise him now in a way to satisfy even Anna, and so to cement the sisterly bond as to make it hard for Anna to give her up.
“It is hard to have you go, sister Maggie,” she would say; “but I think myself it is the best thing you can do. I think it is more likely to stop father where he is than anything else; and so does Charley. After you have been gone a day or two, we are going to take the time when we used to be singing our Sunday-hymns, (he has always seemed to like those, you know,) and tell him that you went because you suffered so. If that don’t stop him, I don’t know of anything that will. But I think it will; and Charley does, too, because he sees what we all know, that you are, after all, the one he always has loved most, and always will. But do you think you are able to go?”
“Yes,” with sobbing voice, Maggie answered.
Seeing how she felt, Anna refrained from saying anything more about her going; but busied herself helping her, packed the trunk herself, because when one was going away, and was sad, that was the hardest thing to do.
She wrote to great-aunt Hester, telling her that her sister was coming; and that, of all the sisters anybody had, she was the dearest, best! always doing something for others, or wanting to; the best dispositioned girl in the world.
“I’m happy!” Maggie kept saying, as the train bore her on, past the brown meadows, past the leafless elms, past the last fields she knew; and she said so, thinking of her father; of the resolute hand put out to keep Charley back, (when the latter would strap her trunk and see it off to the near station,) and afterward working with its mate, to strap it himself and see it off; thinking of the stumbling steps, made to stumble this time by the tears in his eyes blinding him; of the dear chin quivering; as he looked into her face at parting, and many times before that day. ‘I’m happy!” she said; but, for all that, she had, nearly the whole journey, to keep wiping the tears behind her veil.
CHAPTER XII.
Great-aunt Hester told Maggie she believed; the Lord sent her, because he knew how lonesome she and puss were; fixing her in her best arm-chair at her pleasantest window, the one that looked upon the handsomely-curtained, plate-glass window, the balconies and evergreen trees of the Browns—and leaving her there while she went out to make her tea.
Maggie herself sitting in quiet, with her eyes on the white hands using the needle within the window of the house opposite, and on the beau- tiful children running with kitten and dog out- side, felt as if the Lord had sent her. She wept, but without distraction; und her mind was busy with the problem of her future. She got her writing materials out, and wrote a letter; and after tea, while aunt Hester was engaged with her dishes, went out to post it.
Lying beside aunt Hester, sitting the next morning where she could see and hear her about her work, and talk with her, she rested as never before in her life she had rested; for never before had she felt so worn, in such need of rest.
When it was time for the northern mail to be in, she went out to call at the post-office, saying to herself that she did not suppose she would find anything for her, although she might, perhaps; because, before she came away from home, Anna said, “We will send you all the letters
- Charley gets from Mr. Butler. You must see
them, they are so well worth reading. And if any more of his nice things, if they are books, or pictures, or Art Journals, come, we will send them for you to see; but if they are fruit—pears that melt in your mouth, like those he sent yesterday, I am afraid they will melt before we can get them to you. Too bad you are going!”
She found a package with Charley’s elegant, bold superscription. Catching it eagerly, she hastened home; hardly heard one word aunt Hester said, when she replied, speaking a great way from the mark; and so the kind old body, after looking at her wonderingly a few times, and as often transferring her glance to puss sleeping beside her, settled down to her thoughtful hemming.
Late in the afternoon of that day, Maggie dressed and went out to walk, having asked aunt Hester the nearest way to the Amoskeag Falls bridge; and at four o'clock, five, she might have been seen, she and a gentleman, who had left the upward train at the Amoskeag station, walking with slow steps, back and forth, among the pines on the island. Occasionally they leaned against the dark stems as if to rest; but soon moved, again walking back and forth. If one had been near enough, one would have seen that their faces looked shocked, sad beyond
