And now her narrow kitchen walls
Stretched away into stately halls;
The weary wheel to a spinnet turned,
The tallow candle an astral burned;
A manly form at her side she saw,
And joy was duty and love was law.
--Whittier.
On the same Saturday morning that Herbert Greyson hurried away from his friend's cottage, to travel post to Hurricane Hall, for the sole purpose of accelerating the coming of her good fortune, Marah Rocke walked about the house with a step so light, with eyes so bright and cheeks so blooming, that one might have thought that years had rolled backward in their course and made her a young girl again.
Traverse gazed upon her in delight. Reversing the words of the text, he said: "We must call you no longer Marah (which is bitter), but we must call you Naomi (which is beautiful), mother!"
"Young flatterer!" she answered, smiling and slightly flushing. "But tell me truly, Traverse, am I very much faded? Have care and toil and grief made me look old?"
"You old?" exclaimed the boy, running his eyes over her beaming face and graceful form with a look of non-comprehension that might have satisfied her, but did not, for she immediately repeated: "Yes; do I look old? Indeed I do not ask from vanity, child? Ah, it little becomes me to be vain; but I do wish to look well in some one's eyes."
"I wish there was a looking-glass in the house, mother, that it might tell you; you should be called Naomi instead of Marah."
"Ah! that is just what he used to say to me in the old, happy time--the time in Paradise, before the serpent entered!"
"What 'he,' mother?"
"Your father, boy, of course."
That was the first time she had ever mentioned his father to her son, and now she spoke of him with such a flush of joy and hope that even while her words referred darkly to the past, her eyes looked brightly to the future. All this, taken with the events of the preceding evening, greatly bewildered the mind of Traverse and agitated him with the wildest conjectures.
"Mother, will you tell me about my father, and also what it is beyond this promised kindness of Major Warfield that has made you so happy?" he asked.
"Not now, my boy; dear boy, not now. I must not--I cannot--I dare not yet! Wait a few days and you shall know all. Oh, it is hard to keep a secret from my boy! but then it is not only my secret, but another's! You do not think hard of me for withholding it now, do you, Traverse?" she asked, affectionately.