Then, as she looked at him, too much startled to answer, he went on:

"A man has a right to his own thoughts, if he choose to keep them to himself and his Maker. There are some things with which even you may not meddle, Grace. What if my life holds a grief which I would bury from all eyes but my own? would you tear up the clods with unhallowed fingers? To no living person but my Saviour"--and here Archie looked up with reverent eyes--"will I speak of this thing." Then she clung to his arm, and tears flowed over her cheeks.

"Oh, Archie! forgive me! forgive me! I never meant to hurt you like this; I will not say another word!"

"You have not hurt me," he returned, striving after his old manner, "except in refusing to live with me. I am lonely enough, G.o.d knows!

and a sister who understands me, and with whom I could have sympathy, would be a great boon."

"Then I will come," she replied; drying her eyes. "If you want me, I will come, Archie."

"I do want you; and I have never told you anything but the truth. But you must come and be happy, my dear. I want you, yourself, and not a grave, reticent creature who has gone about the house the last few days, looking at me askance, as though I had committed some deadly sin."

Then the dimple showed itself in Grace's cheek.

"Have I really been so naughty, Archie?"

"Yes, you have been a very shadowy sort of Grace; but I give you full absolution, only don't go and do it any more." And, as she looked at him with her eyes full of sorrowful yearning, he went on, hastily: "Oh, I am all right, and least said is soonest mended. I am like the dog in aesop's fable, who mistook the shadow for the substance. A poor sort of dog, that fellow. Well, is your poor little mind at rest, Grace?" And the tone in which she said "Yes" seemed to satisfy him, for he turned their talk into another channel.

When Mrs. Drummond saw her daughter's face that evening, she knew the cloud had pa.s.sed between the brother and sister.

Grace followed her to her room that night,--a thing she had not done for months.

"Mother, I must thank you for being so good to us," she began, impulsively, as soon as she had crossed the threshold.

"How have I been good to you, Grace?" observed her mother, calmly, as she unfastened her brooch. "Of course, I have always tried to be good to my children, although they do not seem to think so."

"Ah, but this is very special goodness: and I am more grateful than I can say. Are you sure you will be able to spare me, mother?"

"After Christmas?--oh, yes: things will be possible then. If I remember rightly, I had to endure some very bitter words from you on this very subject. I hope you will do justice to my judgment at that time."

"Yes, mother," with downcast eyes. "I am afraid Archie and I were very wilful."

"You were wilful, Grace,"--for Mrs. Drummond never suffered any one to find fault with her son in her hearing,--"you who ought to have known better. And yet I do believe that, but for my determination to enforce the right thing, you would have left your post, and all your duties, because Archie wanted you."

"I was wrong. I see that plainly."

"Yes, you were wrong: for a long time you bore yourself towards me as no daughter ought to bear herself to her mother. You angered me sorely, Grace, because I saw you were hardening yourself against me, only because I insisted that no child of mine should neglect her duty."

"Mother, surely I am humbling myself now?"

"True; but how long have I waited for this confession? Night after night I have said to myself, 'Surely Grace will come and tell me that she feels herself in the wrong!' But no such words came. At last I ceased to hope for them; and now at this eleventh hour you can hardly expect me to show much joy at hearing them spoken."

Then Grace's head drooped, and she was silent. She knew she deserved all these hard words, bitter as they were to bear; but Mrs. Drummond had said her say.

"Well, well, better late than never; and we will say no more about it.

Next time you will understand me better, Grace."

Then, as her mother kissed her, Grace knew that her sin was condoned.

Nevertheless, as she left the room a few minutes later, her heart was not quite so light in her bosom; she felt that her mother had been just, but hardly generous.

"I thought mothers forgave more easily," she said to herself, in somewhat aggrieved fashion. She had no idea that her mother was equally disappointed.

Mrs. Drummond was a hard, but not an unloving woman; and she would have liked more demonstration from her daughters. If Grace, for example, instead of all these words, had thrown herself into her arms and owned herself in the wrong, with a child-like pleading for forgiveness, Mrs. Drummond would have felt herself satisfied, and would have pressed her to her bosom with a loving word or two that Grace would have remembered when her mother was in her grave. But such outward forms of tenderness were not possible to Mrs. Drummond's daughters: for in such matters we must reap as we sow; and Mrs.

Drummond's manner hardly merited softness. For there are mothers and mothers; and the world must produce its Drummonds and its Challoners until the end of time.

CHAPTER x.x.xVIII.

ABOUT NOTHING PARTICULAR.

It was as well that Grace had had this talk with her brother; for, during the two days that remained of his brief visit, they were not alone together until the last half-hour before his departure. The young vicar had to return for his Sunday duties; but Mattie remained behind for another week. Archie, indeed, had once sought her in his old fashion,--running up to the school-room for a chat; but Susie had been there all the time. In former days, Archie would have sent her away with blunt peremptoriness; but now he seemed well content to have her there. He had no secrets to discuss, as he sat in his old place in the window-seat; yet Grace was too happy to see him there to find fault with his discourse.

But on the morning of his departure she had come down early to pour out his coffee. He had bidden his mother good-bye in her room; but he knew that, in spite of the earliness of the hour, Grace would be in her place to minister to his wants.

"Well, Grace," he said, entering with his travelling-plaid over his arm, "so it is to be good-bye until Christmas."

"Yes," she returned, looking at him with a sort of wistfulness; "but the time will pa.s.s quickly now. It is so nice to think that we shall begin our new year together." And, as her brother checked an involuntary sigh, she went on eagerly: "If you knew how happy I am about it! It will be something to wake every morning and know you are not a hundred miles off,--that when I come down to breakfast I shall find you there,--that I shall be able to talk to you as much as I like; and as for work, why, it will be play to me to work for you, Archie!"

"Of course I know that," rather mischievously.

"I would work for you like a servant: would I not, dear? I mean to be ever so good to you. Your friends shall be my friends; your likes and dislikes shall be mine too."

"Why, Gracie," he said, humoring her, "this is more than a wife would do for me!"

"Ah! but it is not too much to ask from a sister," she returned, earnestly. "When you bring home your wife, Archie, I mean to be good to her too. I shall have to leave you then, and come back here; but if you are happy I shall not be miserable." But he interrupted her a little impatiently.

"What put such nonsense into your head? I shall never marry. We shall be a pattern of old-bachelor brother and maiden sister." And then he pushed away his plate, and went to the window. "Is it not Mrs. Carlyle who quotes that quaint old story about some one who always thanked G.o.d 'for the blessings that pa.s.sed over his or her head'? Is not that a curious idea, when one comes to think it out? Fancy thanking heaven really and seriously for all our disappointed hopes and plans,--for 'the blessings that go over our heads'! It would be a new clause in our pet.i.tions,--eh, Gracie?"

"Why, yes," she replied, as she came and stood near him. "I am afraid I could never say that from my heart."

"It is not easy," he returned, quietly; "but I do not know that we ought to give up trying, for all that." And then his manner changed, and he put his arm round her in his old fashion. "Recollect, I want you very much, Grace: your coming will make me far happier. Mattie only touches the outside of things; I want some one near me who can go deeper than that,--who will help me with real work, and put up with my bad humors; for I am a man who is very liable to discouragement." And when he had said this, he bade her good-bye.

It was a comfort to Archie to find himself hard at work again. These few days of idleness had been irksome to him. Now he could throw himself without stint or limit into his pastoral labors, walking miles of country road until he was weary, and planning new outlets for the feverish activity that seemed to stimulate him to fresh efforts.

People began to talk of the young vicar. His sermons were changed somehow. There was more in them,--"less of the husk, and more of the kernel," as Miss Middleton once remarked rather pithily.

They were wonderfully brief discourses; but, whereas they had once been elegant and somewhat scholarly productions, they were now earnest and even pungent. If the sentences were less carefully compiled, more rough-hewn, and deficient in polish, there was matter in them that roused people and made them think.

"I never could remember Mr. Drummond's sermons before," Dulce once observed, "but now I can recollect whole sentences quite nicely."

Phillis, to whom she spoke, a.s.sented by a nod. If she had chosen, she could have admitted the fact that she could remember not sentences, but the entire sermon itself. In secret she marvelled also at the change.

"He is more earnest," she would say to herself. "He preaches now, not from the outside, but from the inside of things,--from his own experience, not from other people's. That makes the difference."

And to Nan, who was her other conscience, she said one day, when they were discussing this subject,--