I will try to love no one but father and mother and Clara
and Hal, and oh, dear! when shall I ever be ready to say, 'Now Clara,
let me help you'?"
She said to me through these days I was not happy. "Wild flower, what
troubles thee?" one day, and again, "Emily, my royal Emily, art thou
sighing for wings?"
November came and passed, and the gates of the new year were opening,
still all the way lay dark before me. Night after night my tear-stained
pillow told my sorrow mutely, and day after day I sighed. Mother was not
well, and I felt that everything was wrong. I was worrying myself sick,
I knew, and could not help it.
It was a cold, bitter day, and in my heart lay bitter thoughts when
Matthias came over to tell us, that "Peg was right sick, 'pears like
she's done took sick all in a minit, onions and onions, mustard and
mustard, an nothin' don't do no good. Here's a piece of paper I foun' in
de road, 'pears like you mus' want it," and he handed it to me.
I put it in my pocket and went to ask Aunt Hildy what to do for Aunt
Peg. She proposed to go over, and Ben went with her.
While they were gone I read the paper, which proved to be a letter,
evidently written to Mr. Benton, and the signature was plainly, "your
heart-broken Mary," I could only pick out half sentences, but read
enough to show me the treachery and sorrow, aye, more, a life cursed
with shame, and at the hands of Wilmur Benton.
"Thank God," I cried aloud--I was in the sitting-room alone--and then
tears fell hot and fast, and I sobbed and cried as if I had found a wide
white path that led from the night of my discontent, out into the
morning of the day called peace.
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