On inquiry, it appeared that notice had been given in the morning, but
not till after Miss Williams had gone home to fetch her little niece,
and while Rachel was teaching her boys in the class-room out of hearing.
It was one of the little bits of bad management that were sure to happen
wherever poor Mr. Touchett was concerned; and both ladies feeling it
easy to overlook for themselves, were thankful that it had not befallen
Rachel. Alison Williams, thinking it far to walk either to the Homestead
or Myrtlewood before church, proposed to Grace to come home with her, an
offer that was thankfully accepted, with merely the scruple whether she
should disturb the invalid.
"Oh, no, it would be a great pleasure; I always wish we could get more
change and variety for her on Sunday."
"She is very self-denying to spare you to the school."
"I have often wished to give it up, but she never will let me. She says
it is one of the few things we can do, and I see besides that it brings
her fresh interests. She knows about all my class, and works for them,
and has them to see her; and I am sure it is better for her, though it
leaves her more hours alone with Rose."
"And the Sunday services are too long for her?"
"Not so much that, as that she cannot sit on those narrow benches unless
two are put close together so that she can almost lie, and there is
not room for her chair in the aisle on a Sunday. It is the greatest
deprivation of all."
"It is so sad, and she is so patient and so energetic," said Grace,
using her favourite monosyllable in peace, out of Rachel's hearing.
"You would say so, indeed, if you really knew her, or how she has found
strength and courage for me through all the terrible sutfering."
"Then does she suffer so much?"
"Oh, no, not now! That was in the first years."
"It was not always so."
"No, indeed! You thought it deformity! Oh, no, no! she was so
beautiful."
"That she is still. I never saw my sister so much struck with any one.
There is something so striking in her bright glance out of those clear
eyes."
"Ah! if you had only seen her bloom before--"
"The accident?"
"I burnt her," said Alison, almost inaudibly.
"You! you, poor dear! How dreadful for you."
"Yes, I burnt her," said Alison, more steadily. "You ought not to be
kind to me without knowing about it. It was an accident of course, but
it was a fit of petulance. I threw a match without looking where it was
going."
"It must have been when you were very young."