this to a sensitive, trusting soul—­not death itself, with its gracious healing and oblivion and pathos.  Family quarrels have something sustaining in them, something of a sense of wrong and even indignation to keep up the spirits.  There was no family quarrel here, no indignation, just simple, helpless grief and sense of loss.  In one sense it seemed to the gentle spinster that her own life was ended, she had lived so in this girl—­ever since she came to her a child, in long curls and short frocks, the sweetest, most trustful, mischievous, affectionate thing.  These two then never had had any secrets, never any pleasure, never any griefs they did not share.  She had seen the child’s mind unfold, the girl’s grace and intelligence, the woman’s character.  Oh, Margaret, she cried, to herself, if you only knew what you are to me!

Margaret’s little chamber in the cottage was always kept ready for her, much in the condition she had left it.  She might come back at any time, and be a girl again.  Here were many of the things which she had cherished; indeed everything in the room spoke of the simple days of her maidenhood.  It was here that Miss Forsythe sat in her loneliness the morning after she received the letter, by the window with the muslin curtain, looking out through the shrubbery to the blue hills.  She must be here; she could stay nowhere else in the house, for here the little Margaret came back to her.  Ah, and when she turned, would she hear the quick steps and see the smiling face, and would she put back the tangled hair and lift her up and kiss her?  There in that closet still hung articles of her clothing-dresses that had been laid aside when she became a woman—­kept with the sacred sentiment of New England thrift.  How each one, as Miss Forsythe took them down, recalled the girl!  In the inner closet was a pile of paper boxes.  I do not know what impulse it was that led the heavy-hearted woman to take them down one by one, and indulge her grief in the memories enshrined in them.  In one was a little bonnet, a spring bonnet; Margaret had worn it on the Easter Sunday when she took her first communion.  The little thing was out of fashion now; the ribbons were all faded, but the spray of moss rose-buds on the side was almost as fresh as ever.  How well she remembered it, and the girl’s delight in the nodding roses!

When Mrs. Fletcher had called again and again, with no response, and finally opened the door and peeped in, there the spinster sat by the window, the pitiful little bonnet in her hand, and the tears rolling down her cheeks.  God help her!

XIX