did not agree with Richard. He grew sick first of the water; then of the fare; then of the daily routine of fashionable follies; then of the people; and then, oh! so sick of the petty lectures which Ethelyn gradually resumed as he failed in his attempts to imitate Frank Van Buren and appear perfectly at ease in everybody's presence. Saratoga was a "confounded bore," he said, and though he called himself a brute, and a savage, and a heathen, he was only very glad when toward the last of August Ethelyn became so seriously indisposed as to make a longer stay in Saratoga impossible. Newport, of course, was given up, and Ethelyn's desire was to go back to Chicopee and lie down again in the dear old room which had been hers from childhood. Aunt Barbara's toast, Aunt Barbara's tea, and Aunt Barbara's nursing, would soon bring her all right again, she said; but in this she was mistaken, for although the toast, and the tea, and the nursing each came in its turn, the September flowers had faded, and the trees on the Chicopee hills were beginning to flaunt their bright October robes ere she recovered from the low, nervous fever, induced by the mental and bodily excitement through which she had passed during the last three or four months.
Although he knew it was necessary that he should be at home if he would transact any business before the opening of his next session in Washington, Richard put aside all thoughts of self, and nursed his wife with a devotedness which awakened her liveliest gratitude.
Richard was not awkward in the sick-room. It seemed to be his special providence, and as he had once nursed and cared for Daisy and the baby brother who died, so he now cared for Ethelyn, until she began to miss him when he left her side, and to listen for his returning step when he went out for an hour or so to smoke and talk politics with his uncle, Captain Markham. With Mrs. Dr. Van Buren and Frank and the fashionable world all away, Richard's faults were not so perceptible, and Ethelyn even began to look forward with considerable interest to the time when she should be able to start for her Western home, about which she had built many delusive castles. Her piano had already been sent on in advance, she saying to Susie Granger, who came in while it was being boxed, that as they were not to keep house till spring she should not take furniture now. Possibly they could find what they needed in Chicago; if not, they could order from Boston.
Richard, who overheard this remark, wondered what it meant, for he had not the most remote idea of separating himself from his mother. She was very essential to his happiness; and he was hardly willing to confess to himself how much during the last summer he had missed her. She had a way of petting him and deferring to his judgment and making him feel that Richard Markham was a very nice kind of man, far different from Ethelyn's criticisms, which had sometimes led him seriously to inquire whether he were a fool or not. No, he could not live apart from his mother--he was firm upon that point; but there was time enough to say so when the subject should be broached to him. So he went on nailing down the cover to the pine box, and thinking as he nailed what a nice kitchen cupboard the box would make when once it was safely landed at his home in the prairie, and wondering, too, how his mother--who was not very fond of music--would bear the sound of the piano and if Ethie would be willing for Melinda Jones to practice upon it. He knew Melinda had taken lessons at Camden, where she had been to school, and he had heard her express a wish that someone nearer than the village had an instrument, as she should soon forget all she had learned. Somehow Melinda was a good deal in Richard's mind, and when a button was missing from his shirts, or his toes came through his socks--as was often the case at Saratoga--he found himself thinking of the way Melinda had of helping "fix his things" when he was going from home, and of hearing his mother say what a handy girl she was, and what a thrifty, careful wife she would make. He meant nothing derogatory to Ethelyn in these reminiscences; he would not have exchanged her for a thousand Melindas, even if he had to pin his shirt bosoms together and go barefoot all his life. But Melinda kept recurring to his mind much as if she had been his sister, and he thought it would be but a simple act of gratitude for all she had done for him to give her the use of the piano for at least one hour each day.
In blissful ignorance of all that was meditated against her, Ethelyn saw her piano taken away from the sitting room, where it would never stand again, and saw the tears which rolled down Aunt Barbara's faded cheeks as she, too, watched its going, and tried to fill up the vacancy it left by moving a chair and a table and a footstool into the gap. Those were hard days for Aunt Barbara, harder than for Ethelyn, who liked the excitement of traveling, and was almost glad when the crisp October morning came on which she was to say good-by to the home which was hers no longer. Her two huge trunks stood in the hall, together with the square hair trunk which held Richard's wardrobe, and the three tin cans of peaches Mrs. Captain Markham was sending to her sister-in-law, with the injunction to be sure and get that particular patent for cans if she wished her fruit to keep. In addition to these, an immense box had been forwarded by express, containing, besides Ethelyn's wearing apparel, many little ornaments and pictures and brackets, which, during the winter, might perhaps adorn the walls of the parlor where Daisy's picture hung, and where, Richard had said, was also an oil-painting of Niagara, omitting to add that it was the handiwork of Melinda Jones, that young lady having dabbled in paints as well as music during her two terms schooling at Camden. Tucked away in various parts of the box were also sundry presents, which, at Mrs. Dr. Van Buren's suggestion, Ethelyn had bought for her husband's family. For James, who, she had heard Richard say, was an inveterate smoker, there was a handsome velvet smoking-cap which, having been bought at Saratoga, had cost an enormous sum; for John, an expensive pair of elaborately wrought slippers had been selected; but when it came to Anderson, as Ethelyn persisted in calling the brother whom Richard always spoke of as Andy, she felt a little perplexed as to what would be appropriate. Richard had talked very little of him--so little, in fact, that she knew nothing whatever of his tastes, except from the scrap of conversation she once accidentally overheard when the old captain was talking to Richard of his brothers.
"Does Andy like busts as well as ever?" the captain had asked, but Richard's reply was lost as Ethelyn walked on.
Still, she had heard enough to give her some inkling with regard to the mysterious Andy. Probably he was more refined than either James or John--at all events, he was evidently fond of statuary, and his tastes should be gratified. Accordingly, Boston was ransacked by Mrs. Dr. Van Buren for an exquisite head of Schiller, done in marble, and costing thirty dollars. Richard did not see it. The presents were a secret from him, all except the handsome point-lace coiffure which Aunt Barbara sent to Mrs. Markham, together with a letter which she had sat up till midnight to write, and in which she had touchingly commended her darling to the new mother's care and consideration.
"You will find my Ethie in some respects a spoiled child--[she wrote] but it is more my fault than hers. I have loved her so much, and petted her so much, that I have doubt if she knows what a harsh word or cross look means. She has been carefully and delicately brought up, but has repaid me well for all my pains by her tender love. Please, dear Mrs. Markham, be very, very kind to her, and you will greatly oblige, your most obedient servant,
"BARBARA BIGELOW.
"P.S. I dare say your ways out West are not exactly like our ways at the East, and Ethie may not fall in with them at once, perhaps never with some of them, but I am sure she will do what is right, as she is a sensible girl. Again, yours with regret, B.B."
The writing of this letter was not perhaps the wisest thing Aunt Barbara could have done, but she was incited to it by what her sister Sophia told her of the rumors concerning Mrs. Markham, and her own fears lest Ethelyn should not be as comfortable with the new mother-in-law as was wholly desirable. To Richard himself she had said that she presumed that his mother's ways were not like Ethie's--old people were different from young ones--the world had improved since their day, and instead of trying to bring young folks altogether to their modes of thinking, it was well for both to yield something. That was the third time Richard had heard his mother's ways alluded to; first by Mrs. Jones, who called them queer; second, by Mrs. Dr. Van Buren, who, for Ethie's sake had also dropped a word of caution, hinting that his mother's ways might possibly be a little peculiar; and lastly by good Aunt Barbara, who signalized them as different from Ethelyn's.
What
