"Neither did I," echoed Mrs. Williams. "There never was but one Ruth and Naomi, and they lived so long ago n.o.body knows whether they ever did live. I guess Henry and Anna Belle feel just as we do about mothers-in-law, and, as I said before, what are we goin' to do about it?"

Mrs. Martin's only reply was a look of bewilderment and distress. It was evident to Mrs. Williams that she would have to answer her own question, but she delayed, for there were still a few well considered diplomatic remarks that it might be well to use before the climax was brought on. "Now, I don't want you to answer me, Mrs. Martin. You couldn't be expected to answer that question on such short notice as this. Many's the night I've stayed awake till long after the clock struck twelve askin' myself what could be done about it, and the only thing I can think of is this."

She paused. Mrs. Martin was listening eagerly. The time had come for the final charge.

"Don't you think, Mrs. Martin,"--there was an anxious, beseeching note in the speaker's voice,--"don't you think that you and me might manage to live together? Your house is big enough for two, and it's a double house, with a hall runnin' through the middle, so you can live on one side and me on the other. And if you'll let me come and live in one side of your house, I'll deed my house to Henry and Anna Belle, and they can get married with a clear conscience. You and me can be company for each other, and we've each got enough money to supply our wants; and I'll keep house on my side of the hall, and you'll keep house on your side, and there's no need of our ever fallin' out or interferin' with each other."

There! the deed was done, and the doer of the deed, pale with consternation over her own daring, sat waiting a reply.

But no reply came. Apparently Mrs. Martin had not heard her words, for she was looking beyond her visitor with the dreamy gaze of one who sees, but not with the eye of flesh. Was she considering the question, or was her silence a rebuke to an officious meddler? Mrs. Williams' heart was beating as it used to beat on Friday afternoons when she stood up to read her composition before the school, and she tingled from head to foot with a flush of shame.

"I don't know what you think of me for makin' such a proposition to you," she stammered. "You'll never know what it costs me to say what I've said, and I never could have said it, if it hadn't been for that nightgown put away in the bottom drawer, and the look in Anna Belle's eyes."

Still Mrs. Martin did not speak. The piteous humiliation in her visitor's eyes deepened. She must make one more effort to break the ice of that cruel silence.

"It's not for myself; I hope you understand that. There's no reason why I should want to give up my home, but it's for Anna Belle. A mother'll do anything for her child, you know."

Mrs. Martin's eyes were fixed gravely on her visitor's face.

"Yes, I do know," she said, speaking with sudden resolution. "It's all as plain as day. I don't know what Henry will say, when he finds out that a stranger had to tell his mother what her duty was. I ought to have seen it long ago just as you did." Her voice faltered, and there were tears in her eyes.

The embarra.s.sment and distress on Mrs. Williams' face changed to joyful relief. She drew a quick breath and laid instant hold on her wonted power of speech.

"You're not to blame at all," she consoled eagerly. "If Anna Belle was your child, you'd have seen it just as I did. A son's here and there and everywhere, but a daughter's right in the house with you, and you can read her heart like an open book. That's how I happened to know before you did. My goodness! Is that clock strikin' eleven?" She rose with an air of deep contrition, "Here I've taken up nearly all your mornin'. But then, what's a mornin's work by the side of your child's happiness?" On the threshold she paused and stood irresolute for a few seconds.

"I'm glad you think as I do," she said slowly; "but somethin' tells me that you ought to have time to think it over. It's no light matter to take another woman under your roof and for a lifetime, too. So give yourself a chance to consider, and if you change your mind, we'll still be friends."

The two were standing with clasped hands, and the majesty of motherhood looked forth from the eyes of each. Mrs. Martin shook her head. "I'm not likely to change my mind," she said with gentle dignity. "I love my son as well as you love your daughter."

These simple words seemed to both the conclusion of the whole matter, and they turned away from each other, forgetting the accustomed farewells.

Slowly and thoughtfully Mrs. Williams walked homeward. Her mission had been highly successful, but, instead of the elation of the victor, she felt only the strange depression that comes after we take our fate in our own hands, and make a decided move on the checkerboard of life. On her way to Mrs. Martin's she had felt sure that she was doing "the right thing"; but before she reached home, doubt and uncertainty possessed her mind. At her own gate she stopped, and resting her elbows on the top of one of the posts, she gazed at the place whose surrender meant happiness for her child. It was just a plain little cottage somewhat in need of a coat of paint, but the look in Margaret Williams' eyes was the look of a worshipper who stands before some long-sought shrine. She looked upward at the swaying branches of the elms and drew a quick breath as she thought of a day in early March--how long ago?--when _his_ strong arms had wielded the pick and spade, and she, a girl like Anna Belle, stood by, holding the young trees and smiling at the thought of sitting under their shade when he and she were old. Youth was a reality then, and age a dream, but now it was the other way. Her eyes wandered over the little yard set thick with flowering shrubs and vines. Every one of them had its roots in her heart and in her memory, and a mist dimmed her eyes as she looked again at the house she had first entered when life and love were new.

"He built it for me," she murmured, and then gave a guilty start as a clear young voice called out: "Why don't you come in, Mother?"

She pa.s.sed her hand over her eyes and came smiling into the little hall where Anna Belle sat, turning down the hems of some coa.r.s.e kitchen towels.

"Put up those towels," she said with motherly severity; "that's no work for a young girl. Where's that nightgown you're embroiderin'? If you must work, work on that."

The girl glanced up, and in her eyes was the look that for weeks had been like a dagger-thrust in Margaret Williams' heart.

"There's no hurry about getting that nightgown done," she said quietly.

"No hurry about the towels either," rejoined her mother. "However, it's so near mealtime there's no use beginnin' anything now. You can set the table, and I'll get a pick-up dinner for us. I stayed so long at Mrs.

Martin's I can't cook much."

At the mention of Henry's mother Anna Belle colored again. A question trembled on her lips, but she said nothing, and went about setting the table in a listless, absent-minded way.

Her mother was watching her furtively, and a pang went through her heart as she noticed how thin the girl's hands were, and how she trifled with the food on her plate.

"Pinin' away right before my eyes," she thought. "I'm glad I went to see Mrs. Martin. I've done all I could, anyway."

After the meal was over, Anna Belle, at her mother's second bidding, got out the embroidered gown and bent over the tracery of leaves and flowers. Mrs. Williams went up-stairs, presently returning with a long, narrow box of some dark wood.

"You've heard me speak of your Aunt Matilda," she said, seating herself and folding her hands over the box. "Well, this box and the things in it belonged to her, and when she died, she willed it to you, because she hadn't any children of her own, and you were the only girl in the family. I've been intendin' for some time to give it to you, and there's no time like to-day." She opened the box, took out a roll of shining silken tissue such as comes from the looms of the Orient, and threw its soft folds across her daughter's lap. Then from the scented darkness of the treasure box she drew out a bertha and sleeves of filmy lace and laid them on the silk.

"That lace cost a small fortune," she observed. "Your Uncle Harvey was a merchant, and whenever he went to the East to buy his goods, he'd bring your Aunt Matilda a fine present. This lace was the last thing he ever brought her, and--poor thing!--she didn't live to wear it."

Anna Belle had dropped her work on the floor and was fingering the lace and silk in a rapture of admiration.

"O Mother," she breathed, "I never saw anything so beautiful! Is it really mine?"

She shook out the folds of silk, gathered them in her hands, and held them off to note their graceful fall. She laid the bertha across her shoulders and ran to a mirror, laughing at the effect of the costly lace over the striped gingham; she pushed the sleeves of her dress up to her elbows and slipped the lace sleeves over her bare, slender arms. Her eyes gleamed with excitement, her lips were parted in a smile of happy girlhood, and the mother, watching with quiet satisfaction, read the thought in the girl's heart.

"Be careful, Anna Belle," she warned, "you'll wrinkle the goods. Here, fold it this way and lay it smooth in your trunk. You may not need it now, but some day it will come in handy."

Anna Belle held the silk and lace on her outstretched hands and carried it up-stairs as tenderly as she would have carried a newborn babe. She lingered in her room a long time and came down silent and dreamy-eyed.

All the afternoon she embroidered leaf and flower on the linen gown, while in imagination she was fashioning a wedding robe of silk and lace and beholding herself a bride. When the clock struck five, Mrs. Williams rose hurriedly from her chair and gathered up the lapful of mending.

"Go up-stairs, Anna Belle," she commanded, "and put on your blue muslin."

Anna Belle looked surprised. "Is any company coming?" she asked.

"What if there isn't?" replied her mother. "Don't you suppose I like to see you lookin' nice?" She walked out to the kitchen and began preparing the evening meal. All the afternoon a strange nervousness had been growing on her. She was beginning to understand the momentousness of her morning interview with Mrs. Martin, and she saw herself as one who has risked all on a single throw. She had laid bare to Henry's mother the sacred desires of her own mother-heart and the yet more sacred desires of her daughter's maiden-heart. What if this humiliation should be to no purpose? Or, worse still, suppose she had misinterpreted the fragments of conversation that she had overheard. Suppose Henry's visits were after all only friendly ones? Her hands trembled, and her whole body was in a hot flush of fear and apprehension. She glanced at the kitchen clock.

"It won't be long till I know," she murmured. "If Henry's mother falls in with my plans, Henry'll come to see Anna Belle to-night."

She tried to rea.s.sure herself by recalling all that gentle Mrs. Martin had said, but as the moments pa.s.sed, her apprehension grew, and when she tried to eat, the food almost choked her.

As soon as the dishes were washed, Anna Belle stole out to the front porch. She did not expect her lover to-night, but at least she could sit in the gathering dusk, thinking of Henry and of that wonderful wedding gown. Meanwhile Mrs. Williams was up-stairs, leaning from her bedroom window, listening for Henry's step and peering anxiously in the direction from which Henry must come. How slow the minutes were! The kitchen clock struck seven. Half-past seven was Henry's usual hour, but surely to-night he would come earlier. Ten minutes pa.s.sed. She heard footsteps up the street, and her heart began to beat like a girl's.

Nearer the footsteps sounded. Could that quick, firm tread be Henry's?

Henry was usually rather slow of speech and movement. A hand was on the latch of the gate. She heard Anna Belle's exclamation of surprise and pleasure, then Henry's laugh and Henry's voice.

In the love affairs of her daughter, every mother finds a resurrection of her own youthful romance, no matter how long it may have been buried; and as the young man's tones, low, earnest and charged with a lover's joy, rose on the summer air, Anna Belle's mother turned away from the window, and covering her face with her hands, tried to beat back a tide of emotions that have no place in the heart of middle age. The moments pa.s.sed uncounted now, and twilight had faded into night before she heard Anna Belle's voice calling from below:

"Mother! Where are you, Mother? Come right down. Henry wants to see you;" and like one who walks in her sleep she obeyed the summons.

They stood before her, hand in hand, smiling, breathless, encircled by the aura of love's young dream; but there was a far-away look in Margaret Williams' eyes, as she looked at their radiant faces. How many years was it since she and Anna Belle's father had stood before her mother! And now that mother's name was carved on a graveyard stone, and she was in her mother's place with a mother's blessing in her hands for young lovers.

Anna Belle was looking up at Henry, waiting for him to put into words the grat.i.tude and happiness that filled their hearts. But the gift of the ready tongue was not Henry's. How could a man find words to thank a mother for giving him her daughter? How poor and mean were all the customary phrases of appreciation to be offered for such a gift! But while he hesitated, his eyes met the eyes of Anna Belle's mother, and with a quick impulse of the heart, his tongue was loosed to the utterance of one word that made all other words superfluous.

"Mother!" he said; and as their hands met, Anna Belle's arms were around her neck, and Anna Belle's voice was whispering in her ear: "You are the very best mother in all the world." Yet in that moment of supreme happiness for the lovers, Margaret Williams realized what she was giving up, and tasted the bitterness and the sweetness of the cup of self-abnegation that her own hands had prepared. The hot tears of anguish smarted in her eyes. But the tears did not fall, and the emotion pa.s.sed as swiftly as it had come. She straightened herself in her chair and pushed Anna Belle gently away.

"It seems to me we're makin' a great fuss over a mighty little matter,"

she said carelessly. "I'd have been a poor sort o' mother to stand in the way of my own child's happiness, and it wouldn't suit me at all to be a millstone or a stumblin'-block. That's all there is to it. Now, go out on the front porch, you two, and set your weddin' day."