"Bent o'er her babe, her eyes dissolved in dew,
The big drops mingled with the milk he drew
Gave the sad presage of his future years--
The child of misery, baptized in tears."--John Langhorne.
The days of Anna's waiting lagged. She lost all count of time and
season. Each day was painfully like its predecessor, a period of time
to be gone through with, as best she could. She realized after her
mother's death what the gentle companionship had been to her, what a
prop the frail mother had become in her hour of need. For a great
change had come over the querulous invalid with the beginning of her
daughter's troubles, the grievances of the woman of the world were
forgotten in the anxiety of the mother, and never by look or word did
she chide her daughter, or make her affliction anything but easier to
bear by her gentle presence.
Anna, sunk in the stupor of her own grief, did not realize the comfort
of her mother's presence until it was too late. She shrank from the
strangers with whom they made their little home--a middle aged
shopkeeper and his wife, who had been glad enough to rent them two
unused rooms in their house at a low figure. They were not lacking in
sympathy for young "Mrs. Lennox," but their disposition to ask
questions made Anna shun them as she would have an infection. After
her mother's death, they tried harder than ever to be kind to her, but
the listless girl, who spent her days gazing at nothing, was hardly
aware of their comings and goings.
"If you would only try to eat a bit, my dear," said the corpulent Mrs.
Smith, bustling into Anna's room. "And land sakes, don't take on so.
There you set in that chair all day long. Just rouse yourself, my
dear; there ain't no trouble, however bad, but could be wuss."
To this dismal philosophy, Anna would return a wan smile, while she
felt her heart almost break within her.
"And, Mrs. Lennox, don't mind what I say to you. I am old enough to be
your grandmother, but if you have quarreled with any one, don't be too
spunky now about making up. Spunk is all right in its place, but its
place ain't at the bedside of a young woman who's got to face the trial
of her life. If you have quarreled with any one--your--your husband,
say, now is the time to make it up, since your ma is gone."
The old woman looked at her with a strange mixture of motherliness and
curiosity. As she said to her husband a dozen times a day, "her heart
just ached for that pore young thing upstairs," but this tender
solicitude did not prevent her ears from aching, at the same time, to
hear Anna's story.