“The room at the head of the stairs.  I had a fire made for you in there,” Aunt Barbara said, as she handed him the lamp.

Richard hesitated a moment, and then asked, “Does anyone occupy Ethie’s old room?  Seems to me I would rather go there.  It would be somehow bring her nearer to me.”

So to Ethie’s old room he went, Aunt Barbara lamenting that he would find it so cold and comfortless, but feeling an increased kindliness toward him for this proof of love for her darling.

“There’s a great deal of good about that man, after all,” she said to her sister, when, after he was gone to his room, they sat together around their hearth and talked the matter over afresh; and then, as she took off and carefully smoothed her little round puffs of false hair, and adjusted her nightcap in its place, she said, timidly, “You were rather hard on him, Sophia, at times.”

It needed but this for Mrs. Van Buren to explode again and charge her sister with saying too little rather than too much.  “One would think you blamed Ethie entirely, or at least that you were indifferent to her happiness,” she said, removing her lace barb, and unfastening the heavy switch bound about her head.  “I was surprised at you, Barbara, I must say.  After all your pretended affection for Ethelyn, I did expect you would be willing to do as much as to speak for her, at least.”

This was too much for poor Aunt Barbara, and without any attempt at justification, except that her sister in her attack upon Richard had left her nothing to say, she cried quietly and sorrowfully, as she folded up her white apron and made other necessary preparations for the night.  That she should be accused of not caring for Ethie, of not speaking for her, wounded her in a tender point; and long after Mrs. Van Buren had gone to the front chamber, where she always slept, Aunt Barbara was on her knees by the rocking chair, praying earnestly for Ethie, and then still kneeling there, with her face on the cushion, sobbing softly, “God knows how much I love her.  There’s nothing of personal comfort I would not sacrifice to bring her back; but when a man was feeling as bad as he could, what was the use of making him feel worse?”

CHAPTER XXVI

WATCHING AND WAITING

The pink and white blossoms of the apple trees by the pump in Aunt Barbara’s back yard were dropping their snowy petals upon the clean, bright grass, and the frogs in the meadows were croaking their sad music, when Richard Markham came again to Chicopee.  He had started for home the morning after his memorable interview with Mrs. Dr. Van Buren, and to Aunt Barbara had fallen the task of telling her troubles to the colonel’s family, asking that the affair be kept as quiet as possible, inasmuch as Ethie might soon be found, and matters between her and Richard be made right.  Every day, after the mail came from the West, the colonel rang at Aunt Barbara’s door and asked solemnly, “if there was any news”—­good news, he meant—­and Aunt Barbara always shook her head, while her face grew thinner, and her round, straight figure began to get a stoop and a look of greater age than the family Bible would warrant.