"I don't know," said Sue, doubtfully; "sometimes I think that she is stiff and proud; the truth is she doesn't like to have her old brother pay attention to me. She thinks that he is too old a boy for such nonsense; but _he_ doesn't think so! Good for me that he doesn't. What are you walking so fast for? I went to drive with him every day after business hours; we _did_ look stylish!"

"With Miss Gesner, too?" queried Tessa, in a voice that she could not steady.

"No, indeed," laughed Sue, "and that's the beauty of it. What did we want her along for? Of course we talked about Gerald; we talked a great deal about him. I told him how kind he had been to me and how I adored him and how I mourned for him. I am sure that I cried myself sick; Dr.

Towne gave me something one night to keep me from having hysterics! I should have died of grief if Mrs. Towne hadn't taken me to Old Place; she was like a mother, and _he_ was as kind as kind could be! It was like the other time before I was engaged to Gerald; I couldn't believe that it wasn't that time. The Gesners were kind, too; I thought at first that Miss Gesner really loved me; but she began to be stiff after she saw her brother kiss me. I couldn't help it; I told him that it was too soon for such goings on."

"O, _Sue!_" cried Tessa, wearily. "And he loved you so."

"Gerald! Of course he did! But that's all past and gone! He can't expect me never to have any good times, can he? He didn't leave me any money to have a good time with! I'm too young to shut myself up and think of his grave all the time. You and father are the most unreasonable people I ever saw! Why, he thinks because he thinks of mother every day, and wouldn't be married for any thing, that I must be that kind of a mourner, too! It's very hard; n.o.body ever had so much trouble as I do. I never used to like John Gesner, but you don't know how interesting he can be. He took off my wedding ring one day and said it didn't fit. It always was a little too large. Gerald said that I would grow into it,"

she said, slipping it up and down on her finger and letting it drop on the gra.s.s.

"There!" with a little laugh as she stooped to look for it, "suppose I could never find it. Is that what you call an omen, Tessa? Help me look!"

"No, let it be. Let it be buried, too."

"There! I have found it. You needn't be so cross to me. I wonder why you are cross to me. Gerald Raid once that you would be a good friend to me forever."

"I will, Susie," said Tessa, fervently.

"You always liked Gerald. What did you like him for?" asked Sue, curiously.

As the answer was not forthcoming, Sue started off on a new branch of the old topic. "Mr. John Gesner is going to Europe this fall, or in the winter; he is going on business, but he says that if he had a wife to go around with him that he would stay a year or two. Wouldn't that be grand? Nan Gerard will have to be home when the Seminary opens, anyway.

It would be grand to travel for two years."

"Why does not Miss Gesner go with him?"

"Oh, she wouldn't leave Lewis. Lewis and Blossom Hill are her two idols.

Mr. John says that if he were married, he would build a new house right opposite, and he asked me as we pa.s.sed the grand houses which style I liked best. There was one with porticoes and columns, I chose that. He said that it could be built while he was away, and be all ready for him to bring his bride home to. But you are not listening; you never think of what I am saying," Sue said, in a grumbling, tearful voice. "My friends are forever misunderstanding me. Gerald never misunderstood me.

What do you think Dr. Towne said to me? He said that when I am old, I shall love Gerald better than any one; that what comes between will fall out and leave that time. Won't it be queer? He said that women ought to think love the best thing in the world. I cried while he was talking. I can love any body that is kind to me. When I told John Gesner that, he said, 'I will always be kind to you.' But you are not listening; I verily believe that you care more for that squirrel than you do for me!"

"See it run," cried Tessa. "Isn't it a perfect little creature? If you will come and stay a week with me, we will take a walk every day."

"I can't-now," Sue stumbled over her words. "Say, Tessa, Mr. Gesner has given me a set of pearls. I can wear pearls in mourning, can't I?"

"With your mourning, you can wear any thing."

"Can I? I didn't know it. It's awful lonesome at home; lonesomer than it ever was."

"I would come and stay a week with you, but I do not like to leave father; he is not so strong as he was last summer."

"You wouldn't let Mr. Gesner come and spend the evening; I haven't asked him, but I'm going to ask him the next time I see him."

Dr. Greyson called for Sue late in the evening. "I have the comfort of my old age hard and fast," he said; "she will never want to run away from me again, will you, Susie?"

"I don't know," said Sue, with a hard, uncomfortable laugh; "you must keep a sharp lookout. I may be in Africa by this time next year."

XXVII.-SUNSET.

"Father is very feeble," said Mrs. Wadsworth one day in June. "I shall persuade him to take a vacation. Lewis Gesner told him yesterday that he must take a rest; do you notice how he spends all his evenings on the sofa? I think that if Gus would come and play chess as he used to that it would rouse him."

The week of Mr. Wadsworth's vacation ran into two weeks and into a month; Dr. Greyson fell into a friendly habit of calling daily; Mr.

Lewis Gesner and Mr. Hammerton came for a chat with him on the piazza as often as every other day, sometimes one of them would pa.s.s the evening beside his lounge in the sitting-room. Mr. Hammerton amused him by talk of people and books with a half hour of politics thrown in; and Mr.

Gesner with his genial voice and genial manner helped them all to believe that life had its warm corners, and that an evening all together, with the feeble old man on the lounge an interested listener, was certainly one of the cosiest.

"Father, why have you kept Mr. Gesner to yourself all these years?"

Tessa asked after one of these evenings.

"I would have brought him home before, if I had known that you would have found him so charming."

"He is my ideal of the shadow of a rock in a weary land," she answered; "I do not wonder that his sister's heart is bound up in him. How can brothers who live together be so different?"

"John is well enough," said her father, "there's nothing wrong about him."

"He makes me _creep_," said Tessa, vehemently, thinking of a pair of bracelets that Sue had brought to show her that day.

Mr. Wadsworth lay silent for awhile, then opening his eyes gazed long at the figures and faces that were all his world; Mrs. Wadsworth's chair was at the foot of the lounge, the light from the lamp on the table fell on her busy hands, leaving her face in shadow; Dinah was reading at the table, with one hand pushed in among her curls; Tessa had dipped her pen into the ink and was carelessly holding it between thumb and finger before writing the last page of her three sheets to Miss Sarepta.

"Oh my three girls!" he murmured so low that no one heard.

Mrs. Wadsworth, in these days, was forgetting to be sharp, and hovered over him and lingered around him as lovingly as ever Tessa did.

"Doctor," said Tessa, standing on the piazza with Dr. Greyson late one evening, "do you think that he may die suddenly?"

"Yes."

"Any time, when the pain comes?"

"Any hour when the pain comes."

"Does mother know?"

"I think that she half suspects; she has asked me, and I have evaded the question."

"Does he know it?"

"He has known it since March."

Since he had wanted her to come home!

"Perhaps he has told mother."

"She would only excite him and hasten the end."

"She can be quiet enough when she chooses. I am glad-oh, I am so glad-"