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Mrs. Simpson Kennard was sitting in her pretty morning room with her baby on her knee. She looked across the room at her sister who was paying her a visit. "I wish you had a little child to love, Isabelle. It makes life so different. I am just wrapped up in Florimel."
"For pity's sake, Marion," cried Isabelle peevishly, "don't you grow to be one of those tiresome women who think the whole world is interested in a baby's tooth! I certainly do not echo your wish. I think children are a nuisance."
Marion caught up her baby in dismay. "Why, Isabelle, just think how much they do for us! They broaden our sympathies—I read that only the other day, and——"
"Broaden your fiddlesticks!" said Isabelle contemptuously. "Easy for you to talk when you have everything you want! If you had to live in that poky little house in Marlborough, I guess you would not find anything very broadening about them!
"It is perfectly preposterous to think of our being reduced to such a style of living!" she continued, as Mrs. Kennard strove to soothe her baby's injured feelings with kisses. "Just fancy, only one servant! I never thought a Hildreth would fall so low."
"But you and Mamma are comfortable, Isabelle. It is not as if you were forced to do anything."
"Do anything!" echoed Isabelle. "Are you going crazy?"
"Well, see how hard Evadne has to work? and she is a Hildreth as well as you."
"Evadne!" said Isabelle sarcastically, "with her nerves of steel and spine of adamant! Evadne will never kill herself with work. She is too much taken up with her wealthy private patients. You should have seen her driving round with the Hawthornes in their elegant carriage And I reduced to dependence upon the electric cars! I don't see how she manages to worm her way into people's confidence as she seems to do. I couldn't, but then I have such a horror of being forward."
"'All doors are open to those who smile.' I believe that is the reason,
Isabelle."
"Stuff and nonsense!" was Miss Hildreth's inelegant reply.
"She is a dear girl, Isabelle. Why will you persist in disliking her so?"
"Oh, pray spare me any panegyrics!" said Isabelle carelessly. "It is bad enough to have Louis blazing up like a volcano if one has the temerity to mention her ladyship's name."
"How is Louis?" asked Mrs. Kennard, finding she was treading on dangerous ground.
"Oh, the same as usual. He looks like a ghost, and is about as cheerful as a cemetery. He spends his holidays going over musty old letters in papa's desk. I'm sure I don't see what fun he finds in it. It is so selfish in him, when he might be giving mamma and me some pleasure—but Louis never did think of anyone but himself. One day I found him stretched across the desk and it gave me such a fright! You know what a state my nerves are in. I thought he was in a fit or something,—he just looked like death, and he didn't seem to hear me when I called. He had a large envelope addressed to papa in his hand and there was another under his arm that didn't look as if it had ever been opened, but I couldn't see the address. I ran for mamma, but before we got back he was gone and the letters with him. Whatever it was, it has had an awful effect upon him, though he won't give us any satisfaction, you know how provoking he is. It is my belief he is going into decline, and I have such a horror of contagious diseases!
"If Evadne is so anxious to work, why doesn't she come and help mamma and me? It is the least she could do after all we have done for her, but as mamma says, 'It is just a specimen of the ingratitude there is in the world.'"
* * * * *
The months rolled by and Evadne sat one afternoon in the superintendent's reception room reading a letter which the postman had just delivered. It bore the Vernon postmark.
She had seen but little of Mrs. Everidge through the years which followed her graduation. She had been constantly busy and her aunt's hands had been full, for her husband's health had failed utterly and he demanded continual care. Now her long, beautiful ministry was over, for Horace Everidge, serenely selfish to the last, had fallen into the slumber which knows no earthly waking, and Aunt Marthe was free.
"I do not know what it means," she wrote, "but something tells me I shall not be long in Vernon. I am just waiting to see what work the King has for me to do."
Evadne pressed the letter to her lips. "Dear Aunt Marthe! If the majority had had your 'tribulum' they would think they had earned the right to play!"
She looked up. John Randolph was standing before her with a package in his hands.
"I have been commissioned by the Hawthornes to give this into your own possession," he said with a smile.
She opened it wonderingly. Bonds and certificates of stock bearing her name. What did it mean? John Randolph had drawn a chair opposite her and was watching her face closely.
"You cannot think what long consultations we have held on the subject of what you would like," he said, "you seemed to have no wishes of your own. At last a happy thought struck Reginald, and he sent me a power of attorney to make the transfer of these bonds and stocks to you. It is a Trust Fund to be used to help souls. We all thought that would please you best of all. You are a rich woman, Miss Hildreth."
A great wave of joy swept over her bewildered face. "So God has sent me the fulfilment of my dream!" she said softly. And John Randolph understood.
That evening she wrote to Mrs. Everidge.
"Dear Aunt Marthe,—The King's work is waiting for you in Marlborough. The work that we used to long for—the joy of lifting the shadows from the hearts of the heavy laden—God has given to you and me!"
* * * * *
"Why should you not come to 'The Willows'?"
John Randolph put the question one afternoon, as they were enjoying Miss Diana's hospitality in the fragrant porch. Evadne had just finished a merry recital of their woes.
"We have looked at houses until we are fairly distracted, Aunt Marthe and I. One had a cellar kitchen, and I am not going to have my good Dyce buried in a cellar kitchen; and one had no bathroom, and another was all stairs; and they are all nothing but brick and mortar with a scrap of sky between. I want trees and water and fields. The poor souls have enough of masonry in their daily lives."
"I believe it is decreed that you should come here," he continued, after the first exclamations of surprise were over. "It is just the work our lady delights in, and she cannot be left alone. Dick goes to College next month and I must live in town. The house is beautiful for situation, and a threefold cord of love and faith cannot easily be broken."
He looked round upon them, this man who found his joy in helping others, and waited for their answer.
"It would be beautiful, beautiful!" cried Evadne, "if Miss
Chillingworth were willing. But the house is not large enough, Doctor
Randolph, we shall need three or four guest chambers, you know."
"Nothing easier than to build an addition," said John, with the quiet reserve of power which always made his patients believe in the impossible.
Evadne laid her hand upon Miss Chillingworth's—"Dear Miss Diana," she said gently, "you do not say 'No' to us; do you think you could ever find it in your heart to say 'Yes'? I know it must seem a terrible innovation, but we could never have imagined anything half so delightful, Aunt Marthe and I. The atmosphere—outdoors and in—is perfection!"
Miss Diana looked at the sparkling face and then at Mrs. Everidge with her gentle smile. "I find myself very glad," she said, "since I have to lose my boys, but do you think we had better make any definite plans, dear, until we have talked it over with the Lord?"
And John Randolph said to Evadne with eyes that were suspiciously bright; "It is impossible for anyone to get very far from the Kingdom, when they live with our Lady Di."
The talk had wandered then to different subjects, and John Randolph listened to the soft play of Evadne's fancy and watched the light in her wonderful eyes. Her nature, so long repressed in an uncongenial environment, in this new soil of love and sympathy was blossoming richly and he found her very fair. He had rarely seen her resting. Now the shapely hands were folded together in a beautiful stillness—and then the breeze had waved aside a flower, and a sunbeam, darting through the trellis, fell upon the stone in her ring and made it sparkle with a baleful fire!
"Poor Louis!" Isabelle had said, the last time he had been called to prescribe for her frequently recurring attacks of indisposition, "he will have to wait for promotion now before he can think of marriage. It is very hard for him."
So again the truth and the lie had mingled.