"Well," sighed Miss Maxwell whimsically, "prodigy or pearl, the Randall Protective Agency may pull Rebecca in opposite directions, but nevertheless she will follow her saint."
That will content me," said Adam gravely.
"Particularly if the saint beckons your way."
And Miss Maxwell looked up and smiled provokingly.
Rebecca did not see her aunt Miranda till she had been at the brick house for several days.
Miranda steadily refused to have any one but Jane in the room until her face had regained its natural look, but her door was always ajar, and Jane fancied she liked to hear Rebecca's quick, light step. Her mind was perfectly clear now, and, save that she could not move, she was most of the time quite free from pain, and alert in every nerve to all that was going on within or without the house. "Were the windfall apples being picked up for sauce; were the potatoes thick in the hills; was the corn tosselin' out; were they cuttin' the upper field; were they keepin' fly-paper laid out everywheres; were there any ants in the dairy; was the kindlin' wood holdin' out; had the bank sent the cowpons?"
Poor Miranda Sawyer! Hovering on the verge of the great beyond,--her body "struck" and no longer under control of her iron will,--no divine visions floated across her tired brain; nothing but petty cares and sordid anxieties. Not all at once can the soul talk with God, be He ever so near. If the heavenly language never has been learned, quick as is the spiritual sense in seizing the facts it needs, then the poor soul must use the words and phrases it has lived on and grown into day by day.
Poor Miss Miranda!--held fast within the prison walls of her own nature, blind in the presence of revelation because she had never used the spiritual eye, deaf to angelic voices because she had not used the spiritual ear.
There came a morning when she asked for Rebecca. The door was opened into the dim sick-room, and Rebecca stood there with the sunlight behind her, her hands full of sweet peas. Miranda's pale, sharp face, framed in its nightcap, looked haggard on the pillow, and her body was pitifully still under the counterpane.
"Come in," she said; "I ain't dead yet. Don't mess up the bed with them flowers, will ye?"
"Oh, no! They're going in a glass pitcher," said Rebecca, turning to the washstand as she tried to control her voice and stop the tears that sprang to her eyes.
"Let me look at ye; come closer. What dress are ye wearin'?" said the old aunt in her cracked, weak voice.
"My blue calico."
"Is your cashmere holdin' its color?"
"Yes, aunt Miranda."
"Do you keep it in a dark closet hung on the wrong side, as I told ye?"
"Always."
"Has your mother made her jelly?"
"She hasn't said."
"She always had the knack o' writin' letters with nothin' in 'em. What's Mark broke sence I've been sick?"
"Nothing at all, aunt Miranda."
"Why, what's the matter with him? Gittin' lazy, ain't he? How 's John turnin' out?"
"He's going to be the best of us all."
"I hope you don't slight things in the kitchen because I ain't there. Do you scald the coffee-pot and turn it upside down on the winder-sill?"
"Yes, aunt Miranda."
"It's always `yes' with you, and `yes' with Jane," groaned Miranda, trying to move her stiffened body; "but all the time I lay here knowin' there's things done the way I don't like 'em."
There was a long pause, during which Rebecca sat down by the bedside and timidly touched her aunt's hand, her heart swelling with tender pity at the gaunt face and closed eyes.
"I was dreadful ashamed to have you graduate in cheesecloth, Rebecca, but I couldn't help it no-how. You'll hear the reason some time, and know I tried to make it up to ye. I'm afraid you was a laughin'-stock!"
"No," Rebecca answered. "Ever so many people said our dresses were the very prettiest; they looked like soft lace. You're not to be anxious about anything. Here I am all grown up and graduated,--number three in a class of twenty-two, aunt Miranda,--and good positions offered me already.
Look at me, big and strong and young, all ready to go into the world and show what you and aunt Jane have done for me. If you want me near, I'll take the Edgewood school, so that I can be here nights and Sundays to help; and if you get better, then I'll go to Augusta,--for that's a hundred dollars more, with music lessons and other things beside."
"You listen to me," said Miranda quaveringly.
"Take the best place, regardless o' my sickness.
I'd like to live long enough to know you'd paid off that mortgage, but I guess I shan't."
Here she ceased abruptly, having talked more than she had for weeks; and Rebecca stole out of the room, to cry by herself and wonder if old age must be so grim, so hard, so unchastened and unsweetened, as it slipped into the valley of the shadow.