The summer months had passed away, and September had come and gone, and
yet Cardo had not arrived. Valmai had trusted with such unswerving
faith that in September all her troubles would be over--that Cardo
would come to clear her name, and to reinstate her in the good opinion
of all her acquaintances; but as the month drew to its close, and
October's mellow tints began to fall on all the country-side, her heart
sank within her, and she realised that she was alone in the world, with
no friend but Nance to whom to turn for advice or sympathy.
A restless feeling awoke in her heart--a longing to be away from the
place where every scene reminded her of her past happiness and her
present sorrow. Every day she visited the little grave in the
churchyard, and soon that corner of the burying-ground, which had once
been the most neglected, became the neatest and most carefully tended.
For her own child's sake, all the other nameless graves had become
sacred to Valmai; she weeded and trimmed them until the old sexton was
proud of what he called the "babies' corner." A little white cross
stood at the head of the tiny grave in which her child lay, with the
words engraved upon it, "In memory of Robert Powell ----." A space was
left at the end of the line for another name to be added when Cardo
came home, and the words, "Born June the 30th; died August the 30th,"
finished the sad and simple story. Nance, too, who seemed to have
revived a good deal latterly, often brought her knitting to the sunny
corner, and Valmai felt she could safely leave her grassy garden to the
care of her old friend.
"You are better, Nance," she said one day, when she had been sitting
long on the rocks gazing out to sea, in one of those deep reveries so
frequent with her now, "and if I paid Peggi 'Bullet' for living with
you and attending to you, would you mind my going away? I feel I
cannot rest any longer here; I must get something to do--something to
fill my empty hands and my empty heart."
"No, calon fâch," said Nance the unselfish, "I will not mind at all, I
am thinking myself that it is not good for you to stay here brooding
over your sorrow. Peggi 'Bullet' and I have been like sisters since
the time when we were girls, and harvested together, and went together
to gather wool on the sheep mountains. You have made me so rich, too,
my dear, that I shall be quite comfortable; but you will come and see
me again before very long, if I live?"
"Oh, yes, Nance. People who have asthma often live to be very old.
You know that, wherever I am, I will be continually thinking of you,
and of the little green corner up there in the rock churchyard; and I
will come back sometimes to see you."