Janet's Love and Service Part 85

"It is amazing to me. I can't seem to understand it, or reconcile it to--."

Mr Snow paused and looked at his wife in the deprecating manner he was wont to a.s.sume when he was not quite sure whether or not she would like what he was going to say, and then added:

"However, she don't worry about it. She is just as contented as can be, and no mistake; and I rather seem to remember that you used to worry a little about her when they were here last."

"About Miss Graeme, was it?" said Mrs Snow, with a smile; "maybe I did.

I was as good at that as at most things. Yes, she is content with life, now. G.o.d's peace is in her heart, and in her life, too. I need not have been afraid."

"Rosie's sobered down some, don't you think?" said Mr Snow, with some hesitation. "She used to be as lively as a cricket. Maybe it is only my notion, but she seems different."

"She's older and wiser, and she'll be none the worse to take a soberer view of life than she used to do," said Mrs Snow. "I have seen nothing beyond what was to be looked for in the circ.u.mstances. But I have been so full of myself, and my own troubles of late, I may not have taken notice. Her sister is not anxious about her; I would have seen that.

The bairn is gathering sense--that is all, I think."

"Well! yes. It will be all right. I don't suppose it will be more than a pa.s.sing cloud, and I might have known better than to vex you with it."

"Indeed, you have not vexed me, and I am not going to vex myself with any such thought. It will all come right, as you say. I have seen her sister in deeper water than any that can be about her, and she is on dry land now. 'And hath set my feet upon a rock, and established my goings,'" added Mrs Snow, softly. "That is the way with my bairn, I believe. Thank G.o.d. And they'll both be the better for this quiet time, and we'll take the good of it without wishing for more than is wise, or setting our hearts on what may fail. See, they are coming down the brae together. It is good to see them."

The first weeks of their stay in Merleville had been weeks of great anxiety. Long after a very difficult and painful operation had been successfully performed, Mrs Snow remained in great danger, and the two girls gave themselves up to the duty of nursing and caring for her, to the exclusion of all other thoughts and interests. To Mr Snow it seemed that his wife had been won back to life by their devotion, and Janet herself, when her long swoon of exhaustion and weakness was over, remembered that, even at the worst time of all, a dim consciousness of the presence of her darlings had been with her, and a wish to stay, for their sakes, had held her here, when her soul seemed floating away to unseen worlds.

By a change, so gradual as scarcely to be perceptible, from day to day, she came back to a knowledge of their loving care, and took up the burden of her life again. Not joyfully, perhaps, having been so near to the attaining of heavenly joy, but still with patience and content, willing to abide G.o.d's time.

After that the days followed one another quietly and happily, with little to break the pleasant monotony beyond the occasional visits of the neighbours from the village, or the coming of letters from home. To Graeme it was a very peaceful time. Watching her from day to day, her old friend could not but see that she was content with her life and its work, now; that whatever the shadow had been which had fallen on her earlier days, it had pa.s.sed away, leaving around her, not the brightness of her youth, but a milder and more enduring radiance. Graeme was, in Janet's eyes, just what the daughter of her father and mother ought to be. If she could have wished anything changed, it would have been in her circ.u.mstances, not in herself. She was not satisfied that to her should be denied the higher happiness of being in a home of her own--the first and dearest to some one worthy of her love.

"And yet who knows?" said she to herself. "One can never tell in which road true happiness lies; and it is not for me, who can see only a little way, to wish for anything that G.o.d has not given her. 'A contented mind is a continual feast,' says the Book. She has that. And 'Blessed are the meek, and the merciful, and the pure in heart.' What would I have? I'll make no plans, and I'll make no wishes. It is all in good hands, and there is nothing to fear for her, I am sure of that.

As for her sister--. Well, I suppose there will ay be something in the lot of those we love, to make us mindful that they need better help than ours. And it is too far on in the day for me to doubt that good guidance will come to her as to the rest."

Still, after her husband's words, Mrs Snow regarded Rose's movements with an earnestness that she was not quite willing to acknowledge even to herself. It was rather unreasonable of him, she thought at first, to be otherwise than content with the young girl in her new sedateness.

She was not quite so merry and idle as during her last visit; but that was not surprising, seeing she was older and wiser, and more sensible of the responsibilities that life brings to all. It was natural that it should be so, and well that it should be so. It was matter for thankfulness that the years were bringing her wisdom, and that, looking on life with serious eyes, she would not expect too much from it, nor be so bitterly disappointed at its inevitable failures. She was quieter and graver, but surely no fault was to be found with that, seeing there had been sickness and anxiety in the house.

She was cheerful and busy too, Mrs Snow saw, accomplishing wonderful things in the way of learning to do housework, and dairy work, under the direction of Hannah, and comporting herself generally in a way that was winning the good opinion of that experienced and rather exacting housekeeper. She took great interest in out-of-door affairs, going daily with the deacon to the high sheep pasture, or to the clearing beyond the swamp, or wherever else his oversight of farming matters led him, which ought to have contented Mr Snow, his wife thought, and which might have done so if he had been quite sure that her heart was in it all.

By and by Mrs Snow wearied a little for the mirthfulness and laughter that had sometimes needed to be gently checked during her former visit.

More than once, too, she fancied she saw a wistful look in Graeme's eyes as they followed her sister's movements, and she had much ado to keep from troubling herself about them both.

They were sitting one day together in the south room which looked out over the garden and the orchard and the pond beyond. Rose was in the garden, walking listlessly up and down the long paths between the flower-beds, and Mrs Snow, as she watched her, wondered within herself whether this would be a good time to speak to Graeme about her sister.

Before she had time to decide, however, they were startled by Hannah's voice coming round the corner--

"Rose," it said, "hadn't you just as leives do your walking right straight ahead? 'Cause, if you had, you might take a pitcher and go over to Emily's and borrow some yeast. I don't calculate, as a general thing, to get out of yeast, or any thing else, but the cat's been and keeled the jug right down, and spilled the last drop, and I want a little to set some more to rising."

"Hannah," said Rose, with a penitent face, "I am afraid it was my fault.

I left the jug on the corner of the shelf, instead of putting it away as I ought. I am very sorry."

"Well, I thought pretty likely it might be you, seeing it wasn't me,"

said Hannah, grimly. "That jug has held the yeast in this house since Grandma Snow's time, and now it's broke to forty pieces."

"Oh, I am so sorry!" said Rose.

"Well, I guess it don't matter a great sight. n.o.body will worry about it, if I don't, and it's no use crying over spilt milk. But I guess you'd better tell Emily how it happened. I'd a little rather what borrowing there is between the two houses should be on t'other side. I wouldn't have asked you, only I thought you'd rather go than not. That walking up and down is about as shiftless a business as ever you undertook. But don't you go if you don't want to."

Rose shrugged her shoulders.

"Oh! I'll go, and I'll tell Mrs Nasmyth how it happened, and that it was my fault and the cat's. Mrs Snow," said she, presenting herself at the window, "did you hear what Hannah has been saying? I have broken Grandma Snow's yeast jug into forty pieces, and I am to go and confess to Emily, and get some yeast."

"I thought it was the cat that did it; though, doubtless, it was your fault not putting it in its place. However, there is no great harm done, so that you get more yeast to Hannah."

"And let Emily know that it is my fault and not Hannah's that more yeast is needed. Graeme, will you come and have a walk this bonny day?"

"You can go and do Hannah's errand, now, and I will stay with Mrs Snow, and we will walk together later," said Graeme.

"And you might bring wee Rosie home with you, if her mother will spare her, and if she wants to come. But there is no doubt of her wishing to come with you."

"Is anything the matter with your sister, that you follow her with such troubled e'en?" asked Mrs Snow, after a moment's silence.

"Troubled e'en!" repeated Graeme. "No, I don't think there is anything the matter with her. Do you? Why should you think there is anything the matter with her, Janet?"

"My dear, I was only asking you; and it was because of the look that you sent after her--a look that contradicts your words--a thing that doesna often happen with you, be it said."

"Did I look troubled? I don't think there is any reason for it on Rosie's account--any that can be told. I mean I can only guess at any cause of trouble she may have. Just for a minute, now and then, I have felt a little anxious, perhaps; but it is not at all because I think there is anything seriously wrong with Rosie, or indeed anything that will not do her good rather than harm. But oh, Janet! it is sad that we cannot keep all trouble away from those we love."

"I canna agree with you, my dear. It would be ill done to keep anything from her that will do her good and not evil, as you say yourself. But well or ill, you canna do it, and it is foolish and wrong of you to vex yourself more than is needful."

"But I do not, indeed. Just now it was her restless, aimless walking up and down that vexed me. I am foolish, I suppose, but it always does."

"I daresay it may tell of an uneasy mind, whiles," said Mrs Snow, gravely. "I mind you used to be given to it yourself in the old times, when you werena at ease with yourself. But if you don't like it in your sister, you should encourage her to employ herself in a purpose-like manner."

"Hannah has done it for me this time--I am not sure, however." For Rosie was standing still at the gate looking away down the hill towards the village, "thinking her own thoughts, doubtless," Graeme said to herself.

"She's waiting for some one, maybe. I daresay Sandy has sent some one down to the village for the papers, as this is the day they mostly come."

"Miss Graeme, my dear," continued Mrs Snow, in a little, "it is time you were thinking of overtaking all the visiting you'll be expected to do, now that I am better. It will be a while, before you'll get over all the places where they will expect to see you, for n.o.body will like to be overlooked."

"Oh, I don't know!" said Graeme. "It is not just like last time, when we were strangers and new to the people. And we have seen almost everybody already. And I like this quiet time much best."

"But, my dear, it is too late to begin to think first of your own likes and dislikes now. And it will be good for Rosie, and you mustna tell me that you are losing interest in your Merleville friends, dear! That would be ungrateful, when they all have so warm an interest in you."

"No, indeed! I have not lost interest in my Merleville friends. There will never be any place just like Merleville to me. Our old life here always comes back to me like a happy, happy dream. I can hardly remember any troubles that came to us all those seven years, Janet--till the very end."

"My dear, you had your troubles, plenty of them, or you thought you had; but the golden gleam of youth lies on your thoughts of that time, now.

There was the going away of the lads, for one thing. I mind well you thought those partings hard to bear."

"Yes, I remember," said Graeme, gravely, "but even then we hoped to meet again, and life lay before us all; and nothing had happened to make us afraid."

"My dear, nothing has happened yet that need make you afraid. If you mean for Rosie, she must have her share of the small tribulations that fall to the lot of most women, at one time or other of their lives; but she is of a cheerful nature, and not easily daunted; and dear, _you_ have come safely over rougher bits of road than any that are like to lie before her, and she ay will have you to guide her. And looking at you, love, and knowing that the 'great peace,' the Book speaks about, is in your heart and in your life, I have no fear for your sister, after all that has come and gone to you."

Graeme leaned back in her chair, silent for a moment, then she said, gently,--

"I am not afraid. I cannot think what I have said, Janet, to make you think I am afraid for Rosie."