GOOD BYE

They were alone together in the quiet room—Peace Maythorne and Joy. The thick yellow sunlight fell in, touching the old places,—the wall where Gypsy's blue and golden text was hanging,—a little patch of the faded carpet, the bed, and the folded hands upon it, and the peaceful face.

Joy had crept up somewhat timidly into Gypsy's place close by the pillow. She was talking, half sadly, half gladly, as if she hardly knew whether to laugh or cry.

"You see, we're going right off in this noon train, and I thought I must come over and say good-bye."

"I'm real sorry to have you go—real."

"Are you?" said Joy, looking pleased. "Well, I didn't suppose you'd care. I do believe you care for everybody, Peace."

"I try to," said Peace, smiling. "You go in rather a hurry, don't you Joy?"

"Yes. It's just a week since father came. He wants to stay a while longer, dreadfully, but he says his business at home can't be put off, and of course I'm going with him. Do you know, Peace, I can't bear to have him out of the room five minutes, I'm so silly. It seems all the time as if I were dreaming a real beautiful dream, and when I woke up, the awful days would come back, and he'd be dead again. I keep wanting to kiss him and feel of him all the time."

"You poor child!" said Peace, her eyes dimming a little, "how strange it all has been. How good He's been to you—God."

"I know it. I know He has, Peace. Wasn't it queer how it all came about? Gypsy says nobody but God could have managed it so, and Auntie says He must have had some very good reason.

"You see, father was sick all that time in a little out-of-the-way French town with not a single soul he knew, and nobody to talk English, and so sick he couldn't write a word—out of his head, he says, all the time. That's why I didn't hear, nor the firm. Then wasn't it so strange about that man who was murdered at St. Pierre?—the very same name—George Breynton, only it was George W. instead of George M.; but that they didn't find out till afterwards. Poor man! I wonder if he has anybody crying for him over here. Then you know, just as soon as ever father got well enough to travel, he started straight home. He said he'd had enough of Europe, and if he ever lived to get home, he wouldn't go another time without somebody with him. It wasn't so very pleasant, he said, to come so near dying with nobody round that you knew, and not to hear a word of your own language. Then, you know, he got into Boston Saturday, and he hurried straight up here; but the train only went as far as Rutland, and stopped at midnight. Then, you see, he was so crazy to see me and let me know he wasn't dead, he couldn't possibly wait; so he hired a carriage and drove all the way over Sunday. And oh, Peace, when I saw him out there in the entry!"

"I guess you said your prayers that night," said Peace, smiling.

"I rather guess I did! And Peace, that makes me think"—Joy grew suddenly very grave; there was an earnest, thoughtful look in her eyes that Joy's eyes did not have when she first came to Yorkbury; a look that they had been slowly learning all this year; that they had been very quickly learning these past few weeks—"When I get home it's going to be hard—a good many things are going to be hard."

"Yes, I see," said Peace, musingly. Peace always seemed to see just what other people were living and hoping and fearing, without any words from them to explain it.

"It's all so different from what it is here. I don't want to forget what you've told me and Auntie's told me. Almost everybody I know at home doesn't care for what you do up here in Yorkbury. I used to think about dancing-school, and birthday parties, and rigging up, and summer fashions, and how many diamonds I'd have when I was married, and all that, the whole of the time, Peace—the whole of it; then I got mad when my dresses didn't fit, and I used to strike Therése and Kate, if you'll believe it—when I was real angry that was. Now, up here, somehow I'm ashamed when I miss at school; then sometimes I help Auntie a little, and sometimes I do try not to be cross. Now, you see, I'm going back, and father he thinks the world of me, and let's me do everything I want to, and I'm afraid"—Joy stopped, puzzled to express herself—"I'm afraid I shall do everything I want to."

Peace smiled, and seemed to be thinking.

"Then, you see. I shall grow up a cross, old selfish woman," said Joy dolefully; "Auntie says people grow selfish that have everything their own way. You see, up here there's been Gypsy, and she wanted things just as much as I, so there's been two ways, and that's the thing of it."

"I don't think you need to grow up selfish," said Peace, slowly; "no, I am sure you needn't."

"Well, I wish you'd tell me how."

"Ask Him not to let you," said Peace softly.

Joy colored.

"I know it; I've thought of that. But there's another trouble. You see, father—well, he doesn't care about those things. He never has prayers nor anything, and he used to bring me novels to read Sundays. I read them then. I've got all out of the way of it up here. I don't think I should want to, now."

"Joy," said Peace after a silence, "I think—I guess, you must help your father a little. If he sees you doing right, perhaps,—he loves you so very much,—perhaps by-and-by he will feel differently."

Joy made no answer. Her eyes looked off dreamily through the window; her thoughts wandered away from Peace and the quiet room—away into her future, which the young girl seemed to see just then, with grave, prophetic glance; a future of difficulty, struggle, temptation; of old habits and old teachings to be battled with; of new ones to be formed; of much to learn and unlearn, and try, and try again; but perhaps—she still seemed to see with the young girl's earnest eyes that for the moment had quite outgrown the child—a future faithfully lived and well; not frittered away in beautiful playing only, but filled up with something ; more than that, a future which should be a long thank-offering to God for this great mercy He had shown her, this great blessing He had given her back from the grave; a future in which, perhaps, they two who were so dear to each other, should seek Him together—a future that he could bless to them both.

Peace quite understood the look with which she turned at last, half sobbing, to kiss her good-bye.

"I must go,—it is very late. Thank you, Peace. Thank you as long as I live."

She looked back in closing the door, to see the quiet face that lay so patiently on the pillow, to see the stillness of the folded hands, to see the last, rare smile.

She wondered, half guessing the truth, if she should ever see it again. She never did.

They were all wondering what had become of her, when she came into the house.

"We start in half an hour, Joyce, my dear," said her father, catching her up in his arms for a kiss;—he almost always kissed her now when she had been fifteen minutes out of his sight,—"We start in half an hour, and you won't have any more than time to eat your lunch."

Mrs. Breynton had spread one of her very very best lunches on the dining-room table, and Joy's chair was ready and waiting for her, and everybody stood around, in that way people will stand, when a guest is going away, not knowing exactly what to do or what to say, but looking very sober. And very sober they felt; they had all learned to love Joy in this year she had spent among them, and it was dreary enough to see her trunks packed and strapped in the entry, and her closet shelves upstairs empty, and all little traces of her about the house vanishing fast.

"Come along," said Gypsy in a savage undertone, "Come and eat, and let the rest stay out here. I've hardly set eyes on you all the morning. I must have you all myself now."

"Oh hum!" said Joy, attempting a currant tart, and throwing it down with one little semi-circular bite in it. "So I'm really off, and this is the very last time I shall sit at this table."

"Hush up, if you please!" observed Gypsy, winking hard, "just eat your tart."

Joy cut off a delicate mouthful of the cold tongue, and then began to look around the room.

"The last time I shall see Winnie's blocks, and that little patch of sunshine on the machine, and the big Bible on the book-case!—Oh, how I shall think about them all nights, when I'm sitting down by the grate at home."

"Stop talking about your last times! It's bad enough to have you go anyway. I don't know what I shall do without you."

"I don't know what I shall do without you, I'm sure," said Joy, shaking her head mournfully, "but then, you know, we're going to write to each other twice every single week."

"I know it,—every week as long as we live, remember."

"Oh, I shan't forget. I'm going to make father buy me some pink paper and envelopes with Love stamped up in the corners, on purpose."

"Anyway, it's a great deal worse for me," said Gypsy, forlornly. "You're going to Boston, and to open the house again and all, and have ever so much to think about. I'm just going on and on, and you won't be upstairs when I go to bed, and your things won't ever be hanging out on the nails in the entry, and I'll have to go to school alone, and—O dear me!"

"Yes, I suppose you do have the worst of it," said Joy, feeling a great spasm of magnanimity in bringing herself to say this; "but it's pretty bad for me, and I don't believe you can feel worse than I do. Isn't it funny in us to love each other so much?"

"Real," said Gypsy, trying to laugh, with two bright tears rolling down her cheeks. Both the girls were thinking just then of Joy's coming to Yorkbury. How strange that it should have been so hard for Gypsy; that it had cost her a sacrifice to welcome her cousin; how strange that they could ever have quarreled so; how strange all those ugly, dark memories of the first few months they spent together—the jealousy, the selfishness, the dislike of each other, the constant fretting and jarring, the longing for the time that should separate them. And now it had come, and here they sat looking at each other and crying—quite sure their hearts were broken!

The two tears rolled down into Gypsy's smile, and she swallowed them before she spoke:

"I do believe it's all owing to that verse!"

"What verse?"

"Why, Peace Maythorne's. I suppose she and mother would say we'd tried somehow or other to prefer one another in honor, you know, and that's the thing of it. Because you see I know if I'd always had everything my own way, I shouldn't have liked you a bit, and I'd have been real glad when you went off."

"Joyce, Joyce!" called her father from the entry, "Here's the coach. It's time to be getting ready to cry and kiss all around."

"Oh—hum!" said Gypsy.

"I know it," said Joy, not very clear as to what she was talking about. "Where's my bag? Oh, yes. And my parasol? Oh there's Winnie riding horseback on it. Well, Gypsy, go—od—"

"Bye," finished Gypsy, with a great sob. And oh, such a hugging and kissing as there was then!

Then Joy was caught in her Auntie's arms, and Tom's and Winnie's all at once, it seemed to her, for the coachman was in a very great hurry, and by the time she was in the coach seated by her father, she found she had quite spoiled her new kid gloves, rubbing her eyes.

"Good-bye," called Gypsy, waving one of Winnie's old jackets, under the impression that it was a handkerchief.

"Twice every week!"

"Yes—sure: on pink paper, remember."

"Yes, and envelopes. Good-bye. Good-bye!"

So the last nodding and smiling was over, and the coach rattled away, and the house with the figures on the steps grew dim and faded from sight, and the train whirled Joy on over the mountains—away into that future of which she sat thinking in Peace Maythorne's room, of which she sat thinking now, with earnest eyes, looking off through the car-window, with many brave young hopes, and little fear.

"You'd just better come into the dining-room," said Winnie to Gypsy, who was standing out in the yard, remarkably interested in the lilac-bush, and under the very curious impression that people thought she wasn't crying. "I think it's real nice Joy's gone, 'cause she didn't eat up her luncheon. There's a piece of pounded cake with sugar on top. There were tarts with squince-jelly in 'em too, but they—well, they ain't there now, someways or nuther."

THE END. SXO54gUCzxaYX0NKo/vw6tFxITCUv80l/b1HKfI/cTIqqPPd+quHp2z+t2B2gK95