"Ay," said uncle Tim, with a glance at the unused chair,--"it's the difference between full and empty. 'I went out full, and the Lord has brought me back empty', Ruth's mother-in-law said."

"Who is Ruth?" Mrs. Barclay asked, a little bewildered, and willing to change the subject; for she noticed a suppressed quiver in the hard features. "Do I know her?"

"I mean Ruth the Moabitess. Of course you know her. She was a poor heathen thing, but she got all right at last. It was her mother-in-law that was bitter. Well--troubles hadn't ought to make us bitter. I guess there's allays somethin' wrong when they do."

"Hard to help it, sometimes," said Mrs. Barclay.

"She wouldn't ha' let you say that," said the old man, indicating sufficiently by his accent of whom he was speaking. "There warn't no bitterness in her; and she had seen trouble enough! She's out o' it now."

"What will the girls do? Stay on and keep the house here just as they have done?"

"Well, I don' know," said Mr. Hotchkiss, evidently glad to welcome a business question, and now taking a chair himself. "Mrs. Marx and me, we've ben arguin' that question out, and it ain't decided. There's one big house here, and there's another where Mrs. Marx lives; and there's one little family, and here's another little family. It's expensive to scatter over so much ground. They had ought to come to Mrs. Marx, or she had ought to move in here, and then the other house could be rented. That's how the thing looks to me. It's expensive for five people to take two big houses to live in. I know, the girls have got you now; but they might not keep you allays; and we must look at things as they be."

"I must leave them in the spring," said Mrs. Barclay hastily.

"In the spring, must ye!"

"Must," she repeated. "I would like to stay here the rest of my life; but circ.u.mstances are imperative. I must go in the spring."

"Then I think that settles it," said Mr. Hotchkiss. "I'm glad to know it. That is! of course I'm sorry ye're goin'; the girls be very fond of you."

"And I of them," said Mrs. Barclay; "but I must go."

After that, she waited for the chance of a talk with Lois. She waited not long. The household had hardly settled down into regular ways again after the disturbance of sickness and death, when Lois came one evening at twilight into Mrs. Barclay's room. She sat down, at first was silent, and then burst into tears. Mrs. Barclay let her alone, knowing that for her just now the tears were good. And the woman who had seen so much heavier life-storms, looked on almost with a feeling of envy at the weeping which gave so simple and frank expression to grief. Until this feeling was overcome by another, and she begged Lois to weep no more.

"I do not mean it--I did not mean it," said Lois, drying her eyes. "It is ungrateful of me; for we have so much to be thankful for. I am so glad for grandmother!"--Yet somehow the tears went on falling.

"Glad?"--repeated Mrs. Barclay doubtfully. "You mean, because she is out of her suffering."

"She did not suffer much. It is not that. I am so glad to think she has got home!"

"I suppose," said Mrs. Barclay in a constrained voice, "to such a person as your grandmother, death has no fear. Yet life seems to me more desirable."

"She has entered into life!" said Lois. "She is where she wanted to be, and with what she loved best. And I am very, very glad! even though I do cry."

"How can you speak with such certain'ty, Lois? I know, in such a case as that of your grandmother, there could be no fear; and yet I do not see how you can speak as if you knew where she is, and with whom."

"Only because the Bible tells us," said Lois, smiling even through wet eyes. "Not the _place;_ it does not tell us the place; but with Christ.

That they are; and that is all we want to know.

'Beyond the sighing and the weeping.'

--It makes me gladder than ever I can tell you, to think of it."

"Then what are those tears for, my dear?"

"It's the turning over a leaf," said Lois sadly, "and that is always sorrowful. And I have lost--uncle Tim says," she broke off suddenly, "he says,--can it be?--he says you say you must go from us in the spring?"

"That is turning over another leaf," said Mrs. Barclay.

"But is it true?"

"Absolutely true. Circ.u.mstances make it imperative. It is not my wish.

I would like to stay here with you all my life."

"I wish you could. I half hoped you would," said Lois wistfully.

"But I cannot, my dear. I cannot."

"Then that is another thing over," said Lois. "What a good time it has been, this year and a half you have been with us! how much worth to Madge and me! But won't you come back again?"

"I fear not. You will not miss me so much; you will all keep house together, Mr. Hotchkiss tells me."

"_I_ shall not be here," said Lois.

"Where will you be?" Mrs. Barclay started.

"I don't know; but it will be best for me to do something to help along. I think I shall take a school somewhere. I think I can get one."

"A _school_, my dear? Why should you do such a thing?"

"To help along," said Lois. "You know, we have not much to live on here at home. I should make one less here, and I should be earning a little besides."

"Very little, Lois!"

"Very little will do."

"But you do a great deal now towards the family support. What will become of your garden?"

"Uncle Tim can take care of that. Besides, Mrs. Barclay, even if I could stay at home, I think I ought not. I ought to be doing something--be of some use in the world. I am not needed here, now dear grandmother is gone; and there must be some other place where I am needed."

"My dear, somebody will want you to keep house for him, some of these days."

Lois shook her head. "I do not think of it," she said. "I do not think it is very likely; that is, anybody _I_ should want. But if it were true," she added, looking up and smiling, "that has nothing to do with present duty."

"My dear, I cannot bear to think of your going into such drudgery!"

"Drudgery?" said Lois. "I do not know,--perhaps I should not find it so. But I may as well do it as somebody else."

"You are fit for something better."

"There is nothing better, and there is nothing happier," said Lois, rising, "than to do what G.o.d gives us to do. I should not be unhappy, Mrs. Barclay. It wouldn't be just like these days we have pa.s.sed together, I suppose;--these days have been a garden of flowers."

And what have they all amounted to? thought Mrs. Barclay when she was left alone. Have I done any good--or only harm--by acceding to that mad proposition of Philip's? Some good, surely; these two girls have grown and changed, mentally, at a great rate of progress; they are educated, cultivated, informed, refined, to a degree that I would never have thought a year and a half could do. Even so! _have_ I done them good?

They are lifted quite out of the level of their surroundings; and to be lifted so, means sometimes a barren living alone. Yet I will not think that; it is better to rise in the scale of being, if ever one can, whatever comes of it; what one is in oneself is of more importance than one's relations to the world around. But Philip?--I have helped him nourish this fancy--and it is not a fancy now--it is the man's whole life. Heigh ho! I begin to think he was right, and that it is very difficult to know what is doing good and what isn't. I must write to Philip--