Next morning Ernestine did not come to breakfast, but it was nothing unusual, so Kittie fixed a tempting waiter and took it up stairs.

In a few minutes she called "mama," in a frightened way, and Mrs. Dering instantly sprang up, followed by the girls, and ran up stairs.

Since her sickness, Ernestine had slept alone, and Bea had gone over with Olive; so now, as they hurried in, they saw her untumbled bed, with just the slight pressure made where she had lain down, as though gone to bed for the night; everything else was unchanged. Mrs. Dering sank trembling into a chair, and pointed to a paper lying on the table.

Olive reached it, and read aloud in a frightened, awe-struck voice:

"DARLING MAMA:

"I'm going away; I can't stay, and oh please don't look for me; for I could not come back. It seems as though my heart was broken, and it nearly made me crazy to think that I was all alone in the world, except a wicked, cruel father. Oh, I never knew how much I loved you all, until I found that I was nothing--neither daughter nor sister. I have taken the twenty dollars in gold, and fifteen dollars that I saved from my teaching, and I will go some where and work for my living. I know it will grieve you, and that is all that has kept me from going before; but I could not stand it any longer; something made me go. Oh, please forgive me, and do not look for me. I love you all so much, and it nearly broke my heart to look at the girls, and think they were all sisters, and you their own mama, while I was nothing. Don't grieve for me, please, but do love me.

"ERNESTINE."

CHAPTER XIII.

A YEAR LATER.

Kathleen was sitting in the swing, and idly pushing a hole in the saw dust, with the toe of her shoe; while Katherine sat on a log hemming a handkerchief, a red rose stuck in her hair, and much thoughtfulness in her face.

"I think it's too horrible to think about," said the former, suddenly, and with a vinegary aspect of countenance.

"He may be nice," returned the latter, consolingly, though with much evident distaste to the fact.

"Who cares, and then besides, I bet he isn't."

"You mustn't bet."

"I will. You may be nice, and proper, and so awfully prim, if you want to, but I sha'n't."

"You're nearly fifteen."

"Suppose I am. Besides I'm not; it's three months yet."

"Well," said Kittie, after a pause, and turning a corner in her handkerchief with great nicety, "I suppose since it's settled, that he will be here in a few days. Bea has fixed his room so pretty."

"Pooh! I bet he'll never notice it, and he'll be an everlasting bother, and we'll never have any more fun; and I'm going to tell him the minute he gets here, that I hate him; and I hope that'll make him happy and want to stay," exclaimed Kat vehemently.

"Besides," continued Kittie, as placidly as though nothing was disturbing the serenity of her sister, "you see, my dear, how it will help mama."

Any remark of a like character, would, at any time, reduce the girls from the most active rebellion to pa.s.sive acquiescence; and Kat immediately lost her ferocious determination and looked reflective, as she recalled the dear face they loved, with its pale patient sweetness, and the gray hair that had all come into the brown locks within the last year, since Ernestine went away.

"Well," she said in a moment, and beginning to swing, "I suppose it's all right, but I wish he wasn't so old. Twenty! my goodness! He'll be forever lecturing us and reading solemn books, because I know he's solemn; sick people always are, and everything will have to be poky and still to suit him, and I think it's abominable!"

"Exactly," answered Kittie, with a nod of agreement. "But Kat, there's one splendid big thing to offset all those little horrid ones; why don't you think of that?"

"Well, I do, and I'm most tickled to death, that mama won't have to teach any more; poor, dear, blessed mama, she's most tired and worried to death;" and Kat's face grew very tender as she swung and thought over it all.

"Oh Kat!" cried Kittie, with a sudden vehemence, though the question that hung on her lips had been asked countless times in the past year, "Where do you suppose Ernestine is?"

Kat stopped the swing, and faced her sister with a sudden decision.

"I think," she said slowly, "Kittie, I think she's--dead!"

"Oh no! you don't surely! She can't be!" cried Kittie in terror; for no one had ever hazarded that cruel belief before. "Our Ernestine dead! I couldn't believe it, and I think it would kill mama, if she thought we would never find her again."

"But I can't help but feel so," said Kat sadly. "Just think of her getting into New York in the night, and not knowing anything where to go. I just know something dreadful happened, because we never can find one thing about her after she got there."

"But I don't believe she's dead!" exclaimed Kittie firmly. "I wouldn't believe it if I wanted to; and I think some time, or somehow, we will find her, or she will come back to us."

"Well I hope so I'm sure, for it will never seem right without her,"

said Kat. "Seems to me, we all lived so happy, with no troubles of any kind, until all of a sudden, then everything happens all at once. Home has never seemed the same since papa died."

"When you look back and think how things have changed, don't it seem strange," said Kittie, dropping her sewing and looking pensively off at the wood-pile. "It seems so funny, to think that Miss Howard is married, and that people live in the little old school-house.

"Didn't we used to have fun there?"

"Yes, we did, and we're getting old dreadful fast," said Kat, ruefully.

"I can't imagine anything more dreadful than getting to be young ladies, and having to wear long dresses, and done-up hair, and always be polite and proper. I think it's horrible to be nearly fifteen!"

Kittie loved fun as much as Kat, but she was not quite so frolicsome in her tastes, nor so averse to a graceful train, or a lady-like structure of hair. In fact, she had many ideas of ideal young-ladyhood that would have amazed and dismayed her twin, had they been known. Any one who knew them well was no longer at a loss to know which was which, for while in childhood they had been too similar to ever be distinguished, the coming years brought different ideas to each, and left their print in looks and manner. Kat was wildly rebellious at the thought of growing up; she wanted to remain in the blissful days of short hair and dresses, when she could race with anybody, jump a fence, climb trees, and in every way be as boyish as she could, to pay up for being a girl. Consequently she always had a fly-away, unsettled look about her, rebelled at the lengthened dresses, insisted on wearing her hair in a flying braid, wouldn't be induced to cultivate ease and grace, and altogether was as wild and unconquerable on the threshold of fifteen as she had been in the freedom of twelve. Kittie, on the contrary, had a decided love for grace, and the ease of a cultivated young lady. She did her hair up in various and complicated fashions, occasionally practiced with a train, and had learned to bow with the latest grace and twist. She remembered Ernestine's little graceful ways, and profited by the remembrance, thereby driving Kat to the verge of desperation, by giving frequent lectures on the necessity of sitting still gracefully, and walking without a skip or jump every third step. With all their little growing differences, they were just as devoted and inseparable as ever. Kittie would sit and sew with a lady-like air, and a posy in her belt, while Kat would lounge in the window-seat, and read aloud, or amuse them with nonsense; or, if they went out on the pond, Kittie would wear her gloves and ply her oar with an eye to grace, while Kat would, perhaps, be encased in a sun-bonnet, or be bareheaded and row as if on a contract to outdo the champion club in existence. In their work was the same little mark of distinction, and so now-a-days it was very easy to tell which was Kittie and which was Kat.

It was just a year since Ernestine had gone, and such a long, sad, hopeless year! Not a clue or trace of any kind could they find except that she had gone to New York. The Canfield ticket agent had had his suspicions when a lady had bought a ticket and gone on the midnight train; but it was none of his business, to be sure; so she had gone on her way unmolested, and farther than that, they knew nothing. Where she went on reaching the city, no one knew, though no mode of search had been left untried, and no expense spared, either by Mrs. Dering, or the relatives and friends who so heartily sympathized in her heart-broken search. There was nothing, from himself to the last dollar he possessed, that Mr. Congreve did not offer; and Jean sent a tear-stained note with a crisp ten dollars--all she had, and saying: "Mama, please spend it to find Ernestine; and I ask G.o.d every few minutes, if He won't please let us have her again."

But it had all been in vain. In the long days when Ernestine had sat and thought and grieved, she must have matured her plans well, or else she had gone blindly forth, on the wild impulse of despair, and been swallowed in the black wickedness of the great city, into which she went. It was a ceaseless question in the anxious hearts of those who loved her, but there never came any answer; and the days and weeks dragged into months until the year had rolled around, and they had heard nothing. The name of the lost became more precious than ever, and many things she had left behind, that all spoke so eloquently of her, they treasured as priceless, and wet them with many a sad tear, while heart and lips pleaded for the return of the dear one. The year of anxiety had told on Mrs. Dering, for the soft brown hair was thickly lined with grey, and there was a never-dying look of prayerful anxiety in her face, as though in some way, her life-work had been remiss and the fault of this one, gone astray, lay at her door. Still she never once gave up hope that at some time G.o.d would return this dear one to her, though it required constant prayer to strengthen the faith that trembled on the threshold of this affliction.

Under the strain of mental and physical work, her health was slowly giving way, and for many weeks there had been the anxious question, "what can be done to relieve mama?" and there had been no way discovered, for money was low, and each one already doing her utmost; so Mrs. Dering held her position at the seminary, and was obliged to content herself with one visit home a week, and sometimes not even that, for the hack drive was so fatiguing, and besides, it cost fifty cents every time.

Well, after all, G.o.d never fails to give us something to cheer our flagging steps, never fails to know when a burdened child is falling with its load, and never fails to take the hand outstretched to Him, and help that child along!

In the midst of an anxious controversy one evening, when Mrs. Dering had just arrived home, and was lying exhausted on the lounge; Olive came in from the store and brought a letter with the Boston post mark; it proved to be from Mr. Dering's cousin, a wealthy widow, with an only son whose health was failing, and for whom the doctor prescribed a summer's rest, and relief from study. She had once visited the Dering home, and said she knew of no one, to whom she would so willingly trust her boy, in his delicate health, as to Robert's wife. The price named for his board was lavishly liberal, and filled the long felt want, for it would more than admit of mother's being free and at home to rest, and regain her own health and strength.

So this was what Kat, viewing matters from a personal standpoint, thought was "horrible," and what Kittie tried to reconcile her to by reviewing the good things that would result from it. Bea was to room with Olive, and the sunny front room was fixed for the coming invalid, and it is a pity that all the knick-knacks arranged by the girls could not have retained all the curious conjectures uttered in their hearing, as to what the coming cousin was apt to be like, and repeated them to that same person.

He came one evening, a tall pale youth, with very black eyes, quiet gentlemanly manners, and a faint suspicion of a mustache, and Kat instantly declared that she didn't like him.

"I told you he'd be solemn, and look like a preacher. I bet he's got consumption too, and I suppose he'll call me Kathleen and ask me if I'm prepared to die?" she exclaimed, after they had met him and he had gone to his room.

"I think he's very polite and nice," said Bea.

"He looks very intelligent," added Olive, with a pleasing idea in her mind, of having some one with whom she could discuss her books, and study Latin.

"Some fun in him I know," laughed Kittie. "And what nice manners he has, and black eyes, I wonder if he appreciates them?"

"Poor fellow, just hear him cough," exclaimed Bea in sympathy. "Girls, what have you nice for supper?"