When I found out it wasn’t so—­that your sin did make you suffer, and that it did make a difference trying to do right—­I felt some of my old Martha-ry scornfulness slipping away.  And I got down on my knees, no words, but God understanding why.

I don’t like any kind of bitterness in my heart.  I’d rather like people.  But can you like a deceiver?  You can’t.

Dr. Parke Alden has taken no more notice of me than if I were a Juney-bug.

I wonder if Miss Katherine will ever marry.  She wasn’t meant to live in an Orphan Asylum.  She was meant to be the Lady of the House, and to wear beautiful clothes, and have horses and carriages and children of her own, and to give orders.  Instead of that, she is here; but sometimes she has a look on her face which I call “Waiting.”  Last week I wrote a poem about it.  This is it: 

    “In the winter, by the fireside, when the snow falls soft and white,
    I am waiting, hoping, longing, but for what I don’t know quite. 
    And when summer’s sunshine shimmers, and the birds sing clear and sweet,
    I am waiting, always waiting, for the joy I hope to meet.

    It will be, I think, my husband, and the home he’ll make for me;
    But of his coming or home-making, I as yet no signs do see. 
    But I still shall keep on waiting, for I know it’s true as fate,
    When you really, truly hustle, things will come if just you’ll wait.”

I don’t think much of that.  It sounds like “Dearest Willie, thou hast left us, and thy loss we deeply feel.”  But I wasn’t meant for a poet any more than Miss Katherine for an old maid.

Dr. Parke Alden must be dead.  Either that or he’s no gentleman, or he didn’t get my letter.  I wish I hadn’t written it.  I wish I hadn’t let him know I was living.  But it was Miss Katherine I was thinking about.  Thank Heaven, I didn’t mention her name!  He isn’t worth thinking about, and I think of nothing else.

XIII

HIS COMING

If I could get out on the roof and shake hands with the stars, or dance with the man in the moon, I might be able to write it down; but everything in me is bubbling and singing so, I can’t keep still to write.  But I’m bound to put down that he’s come.  He’s come!

He came day before yesterday morning about ten o’clock.  I was in the school-room, and Mrs. Blamire opened the door and looked in.  “Mary Cary can go to the parlor,” she said.  “Some one wishes to see her.”

I got up and went out, not dreaming who it was, as I was only looking for a letter; and there, standing by a window with his back to me, was a man, and in a minute I knew.

I couldn’t move, and I couldn’t speak, and Lot’s wife wasn’t any stiller than I was.

But he heard me come in, and turned, and, oh! it is so strange how right at once you know some things.  And the thing I knew was it was all true.  That he’d never known about me until he got my letter.  For a minute he just looked at me.  We didn’t either of us say a word, and then he came toward me and held out his hands.