"Well--any how, I am sick of both of you; so hurry, and don't think you are going to stay, because it is beginning to sprinkle," said she, drawing carefully aside one corner of the cook's petticoat as she peered out the window--"come, make haste now," and Aunt Dolly swept down stairs.

Poor afflicted Mrs. Howe! Flynn had robbed the pelerine and bracelet of their power to charm, and the "marked pa.s.sages" no longer gave her consolation, for Finels had admired Rose's eyes. Consuelo, too, lies wheezing in his embroidered blanket; dear little Consuelo! it could not be that _he_ was going to be sick! And Mrs. Howe takes him up gently, strokes his long silken ears, looks into his eyes, and offers him some food, which the pampered little cur refuses.

A scrambling in the blanket!

Consuelo is in a fit!

So is his mistress.

"O, John, for heaven's sake, run for Thomas, he knows all about dogs.

Supposing he should die? O dear--make haste; my darling, my darling!"

and Mrs. Howe ran up stairs, and ran down stairs, ran for water, and ran for physic, opened the windows, and shut them, pulled round Betty, and Sally, and Bridget, and threatened the whole crew, unless they helped Consuelo, to turn them all out of doors. And then Thomas came, and manipulated Consuelo as only his humbug-ship knew how, and restored the convalescent jewel to its mistress, who wept with delight, and crossed his palm with a five-dollar gold piece, and then Thomas retired, calling down blessings on all over-fed puppies in particular, and credulous women in general.

And Rose!

She crept down stairs as well as her tears would let her, stopping to kneel before the door through which the wailing "dearie me--dearie me,"

was issuing.

Wrapping Charley in the only shawl she owned, to defend him from the falling rain, she clambered una.s.sisted, up into the stage. The pa.s.sengers growled when they saw the baby; the rain spattered on the roof, and windows, and the coachman slamming to the door with an oath, cracked his whip, and the stage rolled away.

What pen can do justice to the atmosphere of a stage, omnibus, or railroad car, of a rainy day?

The fumes of alternate whisky and onions, the steaming, cigar-odored coats, the dirty straw soaking under foot, a deluge if you open the window, poison by inhalation if you do not. Charley became more and more restless, while Rose grew still paler, and the drops stood on her forehead, in dread of his prolonged cry.

"I think he will be good with me; let me take him, please," pleaded a sweet voice at her side.

Rose turned, and saw a lady dressed in black, whom she had not before noticed, extending her arms for Charley. Her face was sufficient to win confidence, and Rose accepted her offer. Handling him as only an experienced hand can handle a babe, she changed him with perfect ease from side to side, laid him now up on her shoulder, now down on her lap, without the slightest appearance of discomfort to herself.

Rose looked the thanks she could not speak; then, stupified with exhaustion and sorrow, she leaned back in the dark corner where she sat, and closed her eyes.

The lady made no attempt to draw her into conversation, but gazed lovingly upon Charley's face. Living sorrows, she had none; but on a little tombstone in a church yard far away, the stranger's foot paused as he read:

"OUR FRANK!"

Oh, how many visions of home joys and home sorrows, did those two little words call up!

_Our_ Frank! More than one heart had bled when that little tombstone was reared, and though the hands which placed it there were far away, yet the little grave had ever its garland, or its wreath, for even stranger eyes involuntarily dropped tears, when they read,

"OUR FRANK."

And so Frank's mother sat gazing on Charley's little cherub face, and wondering what grief a _mother_ could know, with her _breathing_ babe beside her.

Pity us, oh G.o.d! for every heart knoweth its own bitterness, and a stranger intermeddleth not therewith.

CHAPTER XXVII.

"What is that?" exclaimed old Mrs. Bond, as she saw the stage, dimly, through the pelting rain, plowing through the clayey mud, up the steep hill toward her door. "Somebody must be coming here, else the driver would have taken the easier cut to the village," and she pressed her face closer against the moist window-pane to get a clearer view.

"It is going to stop here, sure as the world," she exclaimed. "Who can be coming a visiting in such a rain as this? It is not time for old Cousin Patty, these three months yet."

"Dear heart," she said, as the driver jumped off his box, and opened the stage-door, "if it isn't Rose, and that sick baby! Dear heart--dear heart, it is as much as its life is worth. I hope I shall have grace to forgive that woman, but I don't know, I don't know; who could have believed it?" and by this time, the baby was handed into her outstretched arms, and Rose stepped dripping across the threshold.

"Cry, dear--do cry. I am going to cry myself. It is dreadful hard." And she drew the chairs up to the fire, and gazed by its light into Rose's br.i.m.m.i.n.g eyes and Charley's pale face.

"May G.o.d forgive her," she said, at last; "can't you say it, dear?

Try."

Rose answered by pointing to Charley.

"I know it, dear heart; I know it; but you remember the 'crown of thorns,' and the mocking 'sponge,' and the cruel 'spear,'" said the old lady, struggling down her own incensed feelings.

"Take Charley now, dear, he is quite warm, while I run and make you a cup of hot tea," and the old lady piled fresh wood upon the huge andirons, and drew out her little tea-table, stopping now to wipe her eyes, now to kiss Rose and the baby, and whispering, "Try, dear, do; it will make you feel happier; try."

The cheerful warmth of the fire, and Mrs. Bond's motherly kindness, brought a little color into Rose's pale face, and Charley kicked his little cold toes out of his frock, and winked his eyes at the crackling blaze, as if to say,

"Now, this is something like."

After tea, Rose narrated to Mrs. Bond the visit of the old crone to her attic, and expressed her firm belief that she was Dolly's mother.

This was even worse in Mrs. Bond's eyes than Mrs. Howe's cruelty to Rose, and not trusting herself to speak, she gave vent to her feelings by alternately raising her hands and eyes to heaven.

"There will be a sad reckoning-day--a sad reckoning-day, dear," said the old lady solemnly. "He that keepeth Israel shall neither slumber nor sleep."

CHAPTER XXVIII.

It was Monday morning. Mrs. Bond's little kitchen was full of the steam of boiling clothes. Little Charley, with one of Mrs. Bond's long calico ap.r.o.ns pinned over his frock, was pursuing on all fours his infantile investigations.

On the bench before the door stood two wash-tubs, at one of which stood a strapping Irish girl with red arms and petticoats, scrubbing the plowman's clothes with superhuman energy. At the other stood Rose, her curls knotted up on the back of her head, her sleeves rolled up above her round, white elbows, and her calico skirt pinned away from one of the prettiest ankles in the world; even this homespun attire could not disguise her beauty.

Three hours, by the old-fashioned clock in the corner, she had stood there; and yet, though she had rubbed the skin from her little hands, the pile of clothes before her seemed scarcely to have diminished, owing partly to her unskillfulness, and partly that she was obliged to leave off every few minutes to extricate Charley from some sc.r.a.pe with the shovel, tongs, or poker, or to barricade some door through which he seemed quite determined to go; added to this, her heart was very heavy, and one's fingers are apt to keep time with the heart pulses.

Oh, where was Vincent? Would he never return, as he had promised? Was he still "at his father's dying bed?" How strange she did not hear from him. How strange he had not told her where he was. He loved her? Oh, yes--"more than all the world beside." Had he not told her so? He could not have deserted her? Oh--no--no--and yet, poor Rose, there was such a weary pain at her heart; but see, there is Charley again, little mischief, between the andirons. Rose wipes the suds from her hands, and runs to extricate him for the twentieth time. She pats him petulantly; the boy does not cry, but he looks up at her with his father's eyes.

Rose kisses those eyes; she dashes away her tears, and goes back again to her work. She tries to believe it will be all right. Mrs. Bond comes in to make the pudding for dinner. She sees how little progress Rose is making, and though Rose does her best to hide them, she sees the tell-tale tears, trembling on her long eyelashes.

Mrs. Bond has the best heart in the world; she never treads on the little ant-houses in the gravel walks, she says the robins have earned a right to the cherries by keeping the insects from the trees, she has turned veterinary surgeon to keep the breath of life in an old skeleton of a horse which Zedekiah "vowed oughter been shot long ago," she puts crumbs on the piazza for the ground birds, and is very careful to provide for the motherly yellow cat a soft bed. The peddler always is sure of a warm cup of tea, and the wooden-ware man of a bit of cheese or pie. Rose's tears make her quite miserable, so she says to Bridget, in her soft kind way, "I should think _you_ might help wash the baby's clothes, Bridget."

"Not for the likes of her," retorted the vixen, with her red arms a-kimbo. "Thank the Virgin, _I_ am an honest woman."

Rose s.n.a.t.c.hed Charley from the floor and darted through the open door, with the fleetness of a deer; not weary now; strong to bear any thing, every thing but that coa.r.s.e, cruel taunt. Away!--away from it! but where? Oh, Vincent, will it always follow! Strong, is she? Poor Rose!

She falls earthward with her tender burden. Charley utters a cry of pain as his temples strike a sharp stone. Rose heeds not his cry, for she is insensible.