"Father said you were much sought after," said Clelia, with a prim shyness not like her own stormy confession. Sabrina, with her white hair and her young face seemed somehow set apart from love and the sweet uses of it.

"I guess he never knew about that particular one. n.o.body knew that. I had as good a time as you've had, Clelia. I liked him the same way. I've thought of it, day in, day out, when I've seen you with Richmond Blake.

I've never been so near livin' since as I have when I've seen you an'

Richmond together out in that gardin, laughin' an' jokin' in amongst the flowers. Well, he give me up, dear. He give me up."

Her hands took a firmer hold on each other. Her face convulsed into a deeper grief; and Clelia, who had never seen her moved with any emotion that concerned herself alone, gazed at her in awe, with her own pa.s.sion quieting as she confronted that of one so old, yet living still.

"Did you--have words?" she ventured.

"No, dear, no. I guess we couldn't have had, I felt so humble towards him. I never forgot a minute how good it was to have him like me. No.

There was somebody else. You see he was terrible smart. He put himself through college, an' then he met her, an' she was just as smart as he was. Lively, too, I guess. I never see her. But I hadn't anything but my good looks--I was real pretty then. I had that an' a kind of a way of keepin' house an' makin' folks comfortable. Well, I found out he didn't prize me; so I give him his freedom. An' he was glad, dear, he was glad."

She rocked back and forth for a moment, in forgetfulness of any save the long-past moment when she was alive.

"O Sabrina!" breathed the girl.

It recalled her. She straightened, and resumed the habit of an ordered life.

"Now this is what I was comin' to," she said, "the way to bear it. It ain't a light thing. It's a heavy one. A lot o' folks go through with it, an' they take it different ways. Sometimes their minds give out.

Folks say they're love-cracked. Sometimes they die. Yes, Clelia, often I've thought that would be the easiest. But there's other ways."

Clelia's tears were dried. She sat upright and looked at the woman opposite. It suddenly seemed to her that she had never known Sabrina.

She had seen her nursing the sick or in the garden, smiling over her gentle tasks; but she had not known her. Sabrina spoke now with authority, as if she were pa.s.sing along the laws of life into hands outstretched for them.

"When it happened to me, mother was sick. She had creepin' paralysis, an' I had to be with her 'most every minute. When I got my letter, I was in the gardin, right there by the spearmint bed. You see I'd written him, dear, to offer him his freedom; but I found out afterwards I must have thought, in the bottom of my heart, he wouldn't take it. Well, I opened the letter. 'Twas a hot summer day like this. He took what I offered him, dear,--he never knew I cared,--an' he was pleased. The letter showed it. I spoke out loud. 'O G.o.d,' I says, 'I don't believe it!' Then I heard mother's voice callin' me. She wanted a drink o'

water. I begun steppin' in kind o' blinded, to get it for her. Seemed as if 'twas miles across the balm-bed. 'I mustn't fall,' I says to myself.

'I mustn't die till mother does.' And then somethin' put it into my head I needn't believe it nor I needn't give up to it, not till mother died.

Then 'twould be time enough to know I'd got a broken heart."

It almost seemed as if she had never faced her grief before. She abandoned herself to the savor of it, the girl forgotten.

"Well, mother died, an' that night after the funeral I set down by the window where I'm settin' now an' says, 'Now I can think it over.' But I knew as well as anything ever was that when I faced it 'twould take away my reason. So I says, 'Mother's things have got to be put away. I'll wait till then.' So I packed up her things, an' sent 'em to her sister out West. Some o' her common ones 't I'd seen her wear, I burnt up, so 't n.o.body shouldn't have 'em. I put her old bunnit into the kitchen stove, an' I can see the cover goin' down on it now. 'Twas thirty-eight year ago this very summer. Then says I, 'I'll face it.' But old Abner Lake had a shock, an' there wa'n't n.o.body to take care of him less'n they sent him to the town farm, an' folks said he cried night an' day, knowin' what was before him. So I had him moved over here, an' I tended him till he died. An' so 'twas with one an' another. It begun to seem as if folks needed somebody that hadn't anything of her own to keep her; an' then, spells between their wantin' me, I'd say, 'I won't face it till I've cleaned the house,' or 'till I've got the gardin made.' An', Clelia, that was the grief that was goin' to conquer me, if I'd faced it; an' I ain't faced it yet! I ain't believed it!"

A sense of her own youth and her sharp sorrow came at once upon the girl, and she cried out:

"I've got to face it. It won't let me do anything else. It's here, Sabrina. I couldn't help feeling it, if I killed myself trying."

Sabrina's face softened exquisitely.

"I guess 'tis here," she said tenderly. "I guess you do feel it. But, dearie, there's lots of folks walkin' round doin' their work with their hearts droppin' blood all the time. Only you mustn't listen to it. You just say, 'I'll do the things I've got to do, an' I'll fix my mind on 'em. I won't cry till to-morrow.' An' when to-morrow comes, you say the same."

Clelia set her mouth in a piteous conformity. But it quivered back.

"I guess you think I'm a coward, Sabrina," she said. "Well, I'll do the best I can. Maybe if 'twas fall I could get a school, and set my mind on that. I can help mother, but she'd rather manage things herself."

Sabrina bent forward, with an eager gesture.

"Dear, there's lots o' things," she said. "The earth's real pretty. You concern yourself with that. You say, 'I won't give up till I've seen the apple-blows once more. I won't give up till I've got the rose-bugs off'n the vines.' An' every night says you to yourself, 'I won't cry till to-morrow.'"

Clelia rose heavily.

"You're real good, Sabrina," she said. Then she added, in a shy whisper, "And I--I won't ever tell."

"You sit right down," returned Sabrina vigorously, rising as she said it. "I'll bring you the peas to sh.e.l.l. They're late ones, an' they're good. You stay, an' this afternoon we'll go out an' pick the elderberries down on the cross-road. I've got to have some wine."

That week and the next Clelia made herself listlessly busy, and Sabrina was away, nursing a child who was sick of a fever. Clelia was pondering now on her own hurt, now on the story her friend had told her. It seemed like a soothing alternation of grief, sometimes in the pitiless sun-glare of her own loss, and again walking in a darkened yet fragrant valley where the other woman had lived for many years. But on an evening of the third week, she had news that sent her speeding through the Half-Mile Road and in at the door where Sabrina sat resting after a hard day. Clelia was breathless.

"Sabrina," she cried, "Sabrina, Richmond's mother's sick and he's away.

He's gone to New York, and she's left all alone with aunt Lucindy."

"What's the matter with her?" asked Sabrina, coming to her feet and beginning to smooth her hair.

"She's feverish, and aunt Lucindy says she's been shaking with the cold."

"You sent for the doctor?"

Sabrina was doing up a little bundle of her night-clothes that had lain on the chair beside her while she rested.

"No."

"Well, you do that, straight off. An' when he comes, he'll tell you what to do an' you do it."

"Can't you go, Sabrina? Can't you go? Aunt Lucindy wanted you."

"No," said Sabrina, tying on her hat, and taking up her bundle. "I only come to pick me up a few things. That little creatur' may not live the night out. But I'll walk along with you, an' step in an' see how things seem."

Once only in the Half-Mile walk did they speak, and then Clelia broke forth throbbingly to the accompaniment of a sudden color in her cheeks.

"I don't know as I want to go into Richmond's house when he's away, now we're not the same."

"Don't make any difference whether it's Richmond's house or whether it ain't, if there's sickness," returned Sabrina briefly. But at the doorstone she paused a moment, to add with some recurrence of the intensity the girl had seen in her that other day: "Ain't you glad you got somethin' to do for him? Ain't you _glad_? You go ahead an' do what you can, an' call yourself lucky you've got it to do."

And Clelia very humbly did it. Then it was another week, and the two friends had not met; but again at twilight Clelia took her walk, and this time she found Sabrina stretched out on the lounge of the sitting-room. There was a change in her. Pallor had settled upon her face, and her dark eyebrows and lashes stood out startlingly upon the ashen mask. Clelia hurried up to her and knelt beside the couch.

"What is it, Sabrina?" she whispered. "What is it?"

Sabrina opened her eyes. She smiled languidly, and the girl, noting the patience of her face, was thrilled with fear.

"How's Richmond's mother?" asked Sabrina.

"Better. She's sitting up. I sha'n't be there any more. He's coming home to-night."

"Richmond?"

"Yes. The doctor said there wasn't any need of sending for him, and I'm glad we didn't, now. Sabrina, what's the matter?"

"I had one of my heart-spells, that's all," said Sabrina gently. "There, don't you go to lookin' like that."