Then hope whispered to her of a brighter day, when
things would not seem to her as they now did. She would fix up the
desolate old house, she thought; the bare windows which now so
stared her in the face should be shaded with pretty muslin curtains,
and she would loop them back with ribbons. The carpet, too, on the
parlor floor should be exchanged for a better one, and when her
piano and marble table came, the only articles of furniture she had
not sold, it would not seem so cheerless and so cold.
Comforted with these thoughts, she fell asleep, resting quietly
until, just as the sun had set and it was growing dark within the
room, Maude came rushing in, her dress all wet, her face flushed,
and her eyes red with tears. She and Nellie had quarreled--nay,
actually fought; Nellie telling Maude she was blacker than a nigger,
and pushing her into the brook, while Maude, in return, had pulled
out a handful of the young lady's hair, for which her stepfather had
shaken her soundly and sent her to her mother, whom she begged "to
go home, and not stay in that old house where the folks were ugly
and the rooms not a bit pretty."
Mrs. Kennedy's heart was already full, and drawing Maude to her
side, the two homesick children mingled their tears together, until
a heavy footstep upon the stairs announced the approach of Dr.
Kennedy. Not a word did he say of his late adventure with Maude, and
his manner was very kind toward his weary wife, who, with his hand
upon her aching forehead, and his voice in her ear, telling her how
sorry he was that she was sick, forgot that she had been unhappy.
"Whatever else he may do," she thought, "he certainly loves me," and
after a fashion he did perhaps love her. She was a pretty little
creature, and her playful, coquettish ways had pleased him at first
sight.
He needed a wife, and when their mutual friend, who knew
nothing of him save that he was a man of integrity and wealth,
suggested Matty Remington, he too thought favorably of the matter,
and yielding to the fascination of her soft blue eyes he had won her
for his wife, pitying her, it may be, as he sat by her in the
gathering twilight, and half guessed that she was homesick.
And when he saw how confidingly she clung to him, he was conscious of a half-
formed resolution to be to her what a husband ought to be. But Dr.
Kennedy's resolves were like the morning dew, and as the days wore
on his peculiarities, one after another, were discovered by his
wife, who, womanlike, tried to think that he was right and she was
wrong.