"And if he should fail in doing well by you, Miss Eunice, I should rather feel as if you'd expect me to make it good to you. And I don't know but I should feel as if I ought;" and so on. And then Dr Justin appeared.

The greetings all round were pleasant and cordial; and then it was supposed by Fidelia that the deacon would go away. But he had known Justin Everett all his life, or at least his "youthful years," as he said, and never doubted that it was his duty and his privilege to give him welcome in his neighbour's house as if it had been his own. So he rather took matters into his own hand, and "led the meeting," as Jabez afterwards said. Fidelia was indignant. Eunice was not indignant. She was in her heart grateful to the good deacon for "a.s.sisting" at the occasion, though she might not have been quite pleased with his motives.

"I kind o' wanted to know how it was going to be with Eunice, so I stayed," he told his wife afterwards; but he owned that he didn't know much about it after all. "If it had been the old doctor himself, I don't know how she could have talked any other way to him. Friendly?

Oh, yes, she was friendly and cool, but not too cool nor too friendly!

Be you certain that Justin Everett's wife is dead, Asubah?"

"Well, I declare for it! How you talk!" exclaimed Mrs Ainsworth. "As if you don't know as well as I do that she's been dead these two years and more! I hope to mercy you didn't go to saying anything of that kind up there. I _should_ like to see Fidelia Marsh's eyes if she heard any such insinuations about her sister."

But the deacon, though he had taken the lead in the conversation, said nothing indiscreet to Fidelia or any one else, and he rose to go at last, but not until Dr Everett came to take his brother away to see a patient.

Jabez in the meantime had, by an effective movement on the onion-bed, taken formal possession of the garden. He did not see, or he did not seem to see, his grandfather set out for home, and continued his work then and afterwards to such good purpose, that he had so strengthened his position as to leave nothing more to be said or done when in a few days his grandfather "stepped up" again, to talk the matter over.

Fidelia was for many reasons glad that it was in his hands, but she could not reconcile herself to the deacon for having so utterly spoiled to them all the first visit of Dr Justin.

And she was not at home when Dr Justin made his second visit, and his last at that time. One night she came home from a long walk with her friend, Susie, to find her sister, as she almost always found her in the twilight, resting on the sofa, and this time again she thought there were traces of tears on her cheeks. After a little she was not so sure about the tears, but she was sure of the peaceful brightness of her sister's smile of welcome, and of the sweet words with which she greeted her.

CHAPTER FOUR.

A VISIT.

"A good place to rest in," Fidelia Marsh was saying to herself, as she pa.s.sed with her friend Nellie Austin under the great elms whose boughs met over the one long street which makes the larger part of the inland town of Eastwood. "A good place to rest in," she repeated, when the chaise drew up before the door of the large house which was her friend's home.

The house was one of the great square homesteads, built in the early days of the Commonwealth, and it stood in the morning sunshine just beyond the flickering shadows of the elm-trees in the street. It stood at a point where two ways met; and the south door opened on the wide road that led away to the hilly country beyond, and there were great elms there, too, to cast their shadows over porch and doorway when the room grew hot. A wonderful old grape-vine covered the porch, and there were lilac and locust-trees and rose-bushes by the white fence which enclosed a smooth green yard on three sides of the house. Beyond was a garden with fruit-trees and tall hollyhocks and great bunches of phlox, and a row of bee-hives facing the south; and that was all that Fidelia saw before she pa.s.sed into the porch, to meet a kindly welcome.

Only at the last moment had she accepted her friend's oft-repeated invitation to visit her in her home, and she had accepted for the same reason which had made her refuse it before. It was for the sake of Eunice. Fidelia had done well at the seminary during the summer term as far as study was concerned. She had done "splendidly," her cla.s.smates declared with admiring exaggeration; but all the same, she was beginning to think she had done foolishly--to say no worse.

She had undertaken too much for her summer's work, and had been allowed to go on with it as perhaps no other girl there would have been allowed.

Study seemed so easy to her, she was so ready and strong and cheerful, and altogether so sensible, that she had been left to pursue her own way with less close oversight as to health and strength than was usual at the seminary, and she had not proved herself worthy of being trusted in that direction. She had not needed to relight her lamp when the house was at last silent, nor to study by moonlight, but she had often stolen hours from her morning slumbers, and had carried her book to her walks and into her hours of recreation, and even into the morning and evening "half-hour" which is supposed by all concerned to be given to higher things.

Of course she had overdone it, and had failed at last. Or she thought she had failed, because she had at last done wearily and with an effort what she might have done easily and with secret triumph if she had been strong and well, "with all her wits about her." She had not failed in the opinion of her cla.s.smates, or even of her teachers. She had at examinations done as well as the rest--better than most; but she had taken little pleasure in her success, and she was afraid of what Eunice might think of it all.

For of course Eunice must hear all there was to tell. She could keep nothing back from Eunice, even if she would; and in her heart she knew that her sister's thought would be, that she had missed more than she had gained by her over-eagerness to succeed. And, looking at her pale cheeks and her big eyes in the gla.s.s, she determined at least to spare her sister the pain of seeing her till she had rested awhile, and looked like herself again. So she had at the last moment written to Eunice, and had made Nellie Austin happy by coming home with her.

She was heartily welcomed by all in the house, and not as a stranger.

For Dr Austin had known her father and mother long ago, and Dr Everett was also a friend of his.

It was a good house in which to rest--cool and quiet and well-regulated, stirred only by the mild excitement which the comings and goings of Nellie's three young brothers made.

But though Fidelia rested she was hardly content. She was not at peace with herself nor at ease in her pleasant surroundings. Nellie had many friends to see after her long absence, and went here and there as happy as a bird, but, cautioned by her father, she did not urge her friend to go with her, and for the first few days left her much to herself. Dr Austin watched Fidelia quietly during this time, wondering a little where the charm was which had caught the heart of his volatile little daughter. This pale listless girl was little like the bright scholar who had carried all before her in her cla.s.ses, and whose kindness and cheerfulness had been a help and refuge for the homesick and the easily discouraged among them. But he waited patiently. She had been doing too much, and needed rest and quiet and fresh air. If her la.s.situde continued many days longer, then, he told his wife, he would have something to say to her.

In the meantime Fidelia, half conscious of their observation of her and of their disappointment in her, was much ashamed of herself and anything but happy, and wished with all her heart that she had gone straight home to Eunice.

"At home, with something to do, I should never have been so stupid.

To-morrow I will find some work. It is because, for the first time in my life, I have nothing to do that I feel so good-for-nothing."

"Suppose you go a-fishing with the boys to-morrow. They will like to have you go, and it will do you good," said a cheerful voice behind her, when she had got thus far.

Fidelia rose from the doorstep, and faced the speaker. It was cousin Abby Chase, who had come into the porch, and seated herself in a low chair with a bowl of raisins in her hand.

"I was just wishing for something to do; let me help you," said Fidelia.

"Well, if you would like to, I shall be glad of your help."

She took off her own spotless ap.r.o.n and gave it to Fidelia, and soon returned with another. Cousin Abby was a distant relation of the Austin family, who had come to live in the house in the young days of the doctor's mother, first as help and then as housekeeper, and always as valued friend. She was an old woman now, and blest with a wisdom which does not always come with years. She was willing to place herself aside, and to acknowledge that the work which she had done so long could be done better by others now.

If it had cost her anything to give up the work and the responsibilities which had filled her life for so many years, no one knew it from any word of hers. She was sweet-tempered and intelligent. She had always "loved good reading," as she said, and within certain limits she was well read. In the course of many Sunday afternoons she had read--a chapter or two at a time--the books of such of the grand old Puritans as found a place in the doctor's library. The "Missionary Herald" and "The Puritan" were always sent first to cousin Abby's room, and there were few of the questions, sectional or doctrinal, discussed in the one, and few of the missionaries or mission-fields presented in the other, during the last twenty years, with which she was not familiar. In the labourers in more than one mission-field she took personal interest, and gave good help to them in many ways. Her Christian influence was felt in the family, and extended beyond it. There was no one in the town of Eastwood who held a higher place in the general esteem or who deserved it more than did cousin Abby Chase.

"We are expecting company," said cousin Abby; "and Mattie had a bigger wash than ordinary, and so I thought I'd better set to and make some cake and things to-day, to help along."

"Company?" said Fidelia, her face betraying her doubt as to the pleasure of the prospect.

"Yes. We generally do have considerable company, summers, though we have been alone for a spell lately. We don't trouble about company much. They take us as they find us mostly; but just to-day they are Boston folks that are coming, and I wish we had known it sooner. Mrs Austin had a little rather be prepared for such folks."

"You must let me help you," said Fidelia. "I don't know much about such things--except just plain cooking; but I can do as you tell me."

And so she did, to good purpose.

"You take hold as if you knew how," said Miss Abby admiringly.

They had a long busy morning together in the front kitchen, and amidst the beating of eggs and the rolling of paste much pleasant talk went on between them. It was almost as good for Fidelia as a talk with Eunice would have been. When, later, Dr Austin pa.s.sed through the room, he stopped a moment to shake his head at the array of good things which greeted both nose and eyes.

"They look good, don't they?" said Fidelia.

"Y-es," said the doctor, with a shrug. "The question is, are they wholesome?"

"Oh, yes; they are the best of their kind! If they are used in moderation, they won't hurt anybody," said cousin Abby. "Miss Fidelia must be a good scholar if she studies as well as she works."

"Do you?" said the doctor. "Well, never mind. The work has done you good; and I hope Abby will take you in hand and find you more to do another day."

The work had really done Fidelia good. She folded her ap.r.o.n, and turned to her favourite seat in the south porch with a lighter heart than she had had for a long time. But her spirits fell again as she reached the door.

"The company" had arrived--"and a great deal of it," Fidelia thought, at the first glimpse of the flowing garments of a group of ladies who had just alighted from a carriage, and were lingering on the lawn. She glanced down at her faded alpaca, which had been her second-best dress during the whole of the school year, and wished herself at home.

She was hot and tired after her work; and when she heard Nellie Austin's voice calling her name, she made haste to get upstairs before she should be seen. But she could not resist the temptation to turn into cousin Abby's room, from the window of which she could get another glimpse of the strangers.

They were not all strangers. By the side of one of the ladies, carrying her parasol and shawl, walked Dr Justin Everett. But it was a different Dr Justin from him who had sat constrained and silent at his brother's table that first night, and who had responded so gravely the next day to Deacon Ainsworth's untimely congratulations and questions.

His high head was bowed as he listened, and he responded with smiles to his companion.

Then Nellie's voice was heard again, calling,--"Faithful, my Faithful, where are you?" and what Fidelia would have liked to do would have been to hide in cousin Abby's closet, or to run down the back stairs and take refuge in the kitchen again. She did not do either. She laid herself down on cousin Abby's sofa, and shaded her face with a big feather fan that lay at hand. Nellie entered the room on tiptoe.

"Are you asleep, Fie? Are you sick?" said she softly.

"I am neither the one nor the other, though I might have dropped off in a minute or two if you had not come in to disturb me. Have you been in the front kitchen? Have you seen the nice things that cousin Abby and I have been making? I am a little hot and tired, that's all."

"Tired! I should think so! I am ashamed that I was not here to help you. You ought to rest; but it is nearly dinner-time. And, oh, Fidelia, I wish you would put on your white dress!"

"My white dress, indeed! That would be striking twelve o'clock too early in the day, my dear. I must save my white gown for Sunday. Yes, I know you want to show your friend at her best. It's very good of you.

But I shall do you more credit in my every-day wear. And, after all, don't you think my gown looks as well as yours?"