Family Pride

He was very thin, and there were a few white hairs about his temples, so that, though four years younger than her husband, he seemed to her much older, quite grandfatherly in fact, and this accounted for the liberties she took, asking what was the matter, and trying to make him like her again, by assuring him that she was not as vain and foolish as he must suppose from what Helen had probably told him of her life since leaving Silverton.

"I do not like it at all," she said. "I am in it, and must conform; but, oh Morris! you don't know how much happier I should be if Wilford were just like you, and lived at Linwood instead of New York. I should be so happy here with baby all the time."

It was well she spoke that name, for Morris, listening to her as she charged him with indifference, could not have borne much more; but the mention of her child had a strange power over him, of quieting him at once, so that he could calmly tell her that she was the same to him that she had always been, while with his next breath he asked: "Where is your baby, Katy?" adding with a smile: "I can remember when you were a baby, and I held you in my arms."

"Can you really?" Katy said; and as if that remembrance made him older than the hills, she nestled her curly head against his shoulder, while she told him of her bright-eyed darling, and as she talked the mother-love which spread itself over her girlish face made it more beautiful than anything Morris had ever seen.

"Surely an angel's countenance cannot be fairer, purer than hers," he thought, listening while she talked of the only thing which had a power to separate her from him, making her seem as a friend, or at most as a beloved sister.

A long time they talked together, and the sun was setting ere Morris rose, suggesting that she go home, as the night dew would soon be falling.

"And you are not as strong as you once were," he added, pulling her shawl around her shoulders with careful solicitude, and thinking how slender she had become.

From the back parlor Helen saw them coming up the path, detecting the changed expression of Morris' face, and feeling a pang of fear when as he left them after nine o'clock she heard her mother say that he had not appeared so natural since Katy went away as he had done that night. Knowing what she did, Helen trembled for Morris, with this terrible temptation before him, and Morris trembled for himself as he went back the lonely path, and stopped again beneath the chestnut tree where he had so lately sat with Katy. There was a great fear at his heart, and it found utterance in words as kneeling by the rustic bench with only the lonely night around him and the green boughs overhead, he asked that he might be kept from sin, both in thought and deed, and be to Katy Cameron just what she took him for, her friend and elder brother. And God, who knew the sincerity of the heart thus pleading before him, heard and answered the prayer, so that after that first night of trial Morris could look on Katy without a wish that she were otherwise than Wilford Cameron's wife and the mother of his child. He was happier because of her being at the farmhouse, though he did not go there one-half as often as she came to him. She seemed to prefer Linwood to the farmhouse, staying there hours, both when he was at home and when he was away, strolling through his garden, or sitting quietly in the pleasant summer-house which looked out upon the pond.