Ah, well! this was the enigma I had set myself to solve.  And now the old life—­the protected girl’s life—­was receding from me; the old guards, the old landmarks were to be removed by my own hands.  Should I live to repent my rash act, as Aunt Agatha predicted, or should I at some future time, when I looked back upon this wintry day, thank God, humbly and with tears of gratitude, that I had courage given me to see the right and do it, “ad finem fidelis,” faithful to the last?

* * * * *

I found those last few days of home-life singularly trying.  Indeed, I am not sure that I was not distinctly grateful when the final evening arrived.  When one has to perform a painful duty there is no use in lingering over it; and when one is secretly troubled, a spoken and too discursive sympathy only irritates our mental membrane.  How could Job, for example, tolerate the sackcloth and ashes, and, worse still, the combative eloquence of his friends?

Aunt Agatha’s pathetic looks and pitying words fretted me to the very verge of endurance.  I wished she would have been less mindful of my comforts, that she would not have insisted on helping me with my sewing, and loading me with little surprises in the shape of gifts.  But for the bitter cold that kept me an unwilling prisoner by the fireside, I would have escaped into my own room to avoid the looks that seemed to follow me everywhere.

But I would not yield to my inward irritability; I hummed a tune; I even sang to myself, as I hemmed my new bib aprons, or quilled the neat border for my cap.  Nay, I became recklessly gay the last night, and dressed myself in what I termed my nurse’s uniform, a dark-navy blue cambric, and then went down to show myself to Uncle Keith, who was reading aloud the paper to Aunt Agatha.  I could see him start as I entered; but Aunt Agatha’s first words made me blush, and in a moment I repented my misplaced spirit of fun.

“Why, Merle, how pretty you look!  Does not the child look almost pretty, Ezra, though that cap does hide her nice smooth hair?  I had no idea that dress would be so becoming.”  But the rest of Aunt Agatha’s speech was lost upon me, for I ran out of the room.  Why, they seemed actually to believe that I was play-acting, that my part was a becoming one!  Pretty, indeed!  And here such a strange revulsion of feeling took possession of me that I absolutely shed a few tears, though none but myself was witness to this humiliating fact.

I did not go downstairs for a long time after that, and then, to my relief, I found Uncle Keith alone; for men are less sharp in some matters than women, and he would never find out that I had been crying, as Aunt Agatha would; but I was a little taken aback when he put down his paper, and asked, in a kind voice, why I had stayed so long in the cold, and if I had not finished my packing.

“Oh, yes,” I returned, promptly, “everything was done, and my trunk was only waiting to be strapped down.”