"Poor child, you are tired and worn. It is hard to lose him just as
there was a prospect of perfect reconciliation with us all," Mrs.
Richards said, softly smoothing the brown tresses lying on her lap, and
thinking even then that curls were more becoming to her daughter-in-law
than braids had been, but wondering why, now she was in mourning, Adah
had persisted in wearing them.
"Pretty girl, pretty turls, is you tyin'?" and won by her distress,
Willie drew near, and laid his baby hand upon the curls he thought so
pretty.
"That's mamma, Willie," Asenath said; "the mamma Aunt Anna said would
come some time--Willie's mamma. Can't he kiss her?"
The child could not resist the face which, lifting itself up, looked
eagerly at him, and he put up his little hands for Adah to take him,
returning the kisses she showered upon him and clinging to her neck,
while he said: "Is you mam-ma sure? I prays for mam-ma--God take care of her, and pa-pa
too. He's dead. They brought him back with a dum. Poor pa-pa, Willie
don't want him dead;" and the little lip began to quiver.
Never before since she knew she was a widow had Adah felt so vivid a
sensation of something akin to affection for the dead, as when her child
and his mourned so plaintively for papa; and the tears which now fell
like rain were not for Willie alone, but were given rather to the dead.
"Mrs. Richards has not yet greeted us," Asenath said; and turning to
her at once, Adah apologized for her seeming neglect, pressing both her
and Eudora's hands more cordially than she would have done a few moments
before.
"Where is Anna?" she asked; and Mrs. Richards replied: "She's sick. She regretted much that she could not come up here to-day;"
while Willie, standing in Adah's lap, with his chubby arm around her
neck, chimed in.
"You don't know what we've dot. We've dot 'ittle baby, we has."
Adah knew now why Anna was absent, and why Charlie Millbrook looked so
happy when at last he came in to see her, delivering sundry messages
from his Anna, who, he said could scarcely wait to see her dear sister.
There was something genuine in Charlie's greeting, something which made
Adah feel as if she were indeed at home, and she wondered much how even
the Richards race could ever have objected to him, as she watched his
movements and heard him talking with his stately mother.
"Yes, Major Stanley came," he said, in reply to her questions, and Adah
was glad it was put to him, for the blushes dyed her cheek at once, and
she bent over Willie to hide them, while Charlie continued: "Captain
Worthington came, too, Adah's brother, you know. He was in the same
battle with the doctor, was wounded rather seriously and has been
discharged, I believe."