Part 81 (2/2)

'What have you guessed?'

'Only what we used to plan, in the old times after you had been at Coombe, Leonard.'

'Dear sister! And you would let me go!'

'Our parting is near, any way,' she said, her eye turning to the print from Ary Scheffer's St. Augustine and Monica. 'Whoever gave us that, divined how we ought to feel in these last days together.'

'It was Richard May's gift,' said Leonard. 'Ave, there was nothing wanting but your liking this.'

'Then so it is?' she asked.

'Unless the past disqualifies me,' he said. 'I have spoken to no one yet, except little d.i.c.kie. When I thought I ought to find some present employment, and wanted to take a clerks.h.i.+p at Bramshaw's, Dr. May made me promise to wait till I had seen you before I fixed on anything; but my mind is made up, and I shall speak now--with your blessing on it, Ave.'

'I knew it!' she said.

He saw it was safer to quit this subject, and asked for Henry.

'He sent his love. He met us at New York. He is grown so soldierly, with such a black beard, that he is more grown out of knowledge than any of us, but I scarcely saw him, for he was quite overset at my appearance, and Tom thought it did me harm. I wish our new sister would have come to see me.

'Sister!'

'Oh, did you not know? I thought Tom had written! She is a Virginian lady, whose first husband was a doctor, who died of camp-fever early in the war. A Federal, of course. And they are to be married as soon as Charleston has fallen.'

Leonard smiled. And Averil expressed her certainty that it had fallen by that time.

'And he is quite Americanized?' asked Leonard. 'Does he return to our own name! No? Then I do not wonder he did not wish for me. Perhaps he may yet bear to meet me, some day when we are grown old.'

'At least we can pray to be altogether, where one is gone already' said Averil. 'That was the one comfort in parting with the dear Cora--my blessing through all the worst! Leonard, she would not go to live in the fine house her father has taken at New York, but she is gone to be one of the nurses in the midst of all the hospital miseries. And, oh, what comfort she will carry with her!'

Here Tom returned, but made no objection to her brother's stay, perceiving that his aspect and voice were like fulness to the hungry heart that had pined so long--but keeping all the others away; and they meanwhile were much entertained by Ella, who was in joyous spirits; a little subdued, indeed, by the unknown brother, but in his absence very communicative. Gertrude was greatly amused with her account of the marriage, in the sitting-room at Ma.s.sissauga, and of Tom's being so unprepared for the brevity of the American form, that he never knew where he was in the Service, and completed it with a puzzled 'Is that all?'

Averil had, according to Ella, been infinitely more calm and composed.

'She does nothing but watch his eyes,' said Ella; 'and ever since we parted from Cora, I have had no one to speak to! In the cabin he never stirred from sitting by her; and if she could speak at all, it was so low that I could not hear. School will be quite lively.'

'Are you going to school?'

'Oh yes! where Ave was. That is quite fixed; and I have had enough of playing third person,' said Ella, with her precocious Western manner.

'You know I have all my own property, so I shall be on no one's hands!

Oh, and Cora made her father buy all Ave's Ma.s.sissauga shares--at a dead loss to us of course.'

'Well,' said Gertrude, 'I am sorry Tom is not an American share-holder.

It was such fun!'

'He wanted to have made them all over to Henry; but Cora was determined; and her father is making heaps of money as a commissary, so I am sure he could afford it. Some day, when the rebellion is subdued, I mean to go and see Cora and Henry and his wife,' added Ella, whose tinge of Americanism formed an amusing contrast with d.i.c.kie's colonial ease--especially when she began to detail the discomforts of Ma.s.sissauga, and he made practical suggestions for the remedies of each--describing how mamma and he himself managed.

The younger ones had all gone to bed, Richard had returned home, and Ethel was waiting to let her father in, when Leonard came back with the new arrivals.

'I did not think you would be allowed to stay so late,' said Ethel.

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