Oldfield Part 23

"It would break my heart to think that you doubted. I don't know how I can do it, but I will--I will--I will--somehow. I will take care of Miss Sophia--always--I will work so hard. There must be work--somewhere, for me to do. Whatever I can make shall be hers. Anyway, our home is hers. I will try to be as good to her--as you have been to me."

"I do believe--my child," the faint and distant but sweet and loving voice said quite distinctly, and then, after one of the long, fluttering pauses, "but--you must let--Lynn--advise you."

"Oh, if Doris only would--if you only could persuade her," Lynn cried.

He fell on his knees beside the slender bowed figure, and laid his trembling hand on the golden head which rested now, shaken by sobbing, on the pillow close to the silver head that lay so quiet. He made no further vain effort to restrain a man's rare, reluctant tears, nor to steady his broken voice.

"If you will ask Doris--maybe she can forgive me--for what I never meant to do--for what I did not know I was doing--till too late. Won't you ask?" he implored. "Dear, dear Miss Judy, she can refuse nothing--not even that--to you. And I love her so--with all my heart and soul and mind and strength. Won't you ask her to let me help her in caring for Miss Sophia--then all would be well; then there need be no more trouble.

Can't you speak, dear Miss Judy? Just one word. Try--_try_ to ask her to let me help her--even though she may never consent to be my wife."

But this late-found, powerful plea seemed for a s.p.a.ce to come too late, to fall all unheeded away from death's deaf ears. A wonderful radiance, such as rarely dawns in the face of the living, was now slowly dawning in the sweet, still whiteness of Miss Judy's face. The young man could not look upon it; he could not bear to hear Doris's helpless, heart-broken sobbing; he could only keep to his knees and lay his humbled head lower on the old quilt and nearer hers.

And then after a long time, after all hope of hearing the gentle voice again seemed wholly lost, it came back like a whisper in a dream, and Lynn and Doris heard Miss Judy say:--

"I do--ask--it--Doris--dear one. But--unless--you are--married--it wouldn't--be----"

She could say no more, but she had said enough. With this crowning triumph of her last artless plot the smile on the little white face brightened forever into unearthly sweetness. With these last words Miss Judy's gentle spirit breathed itself out of the world.