“Eight years ago Jack Blewitt wanted a place.
Nobody would hire him, because his father was in
the penitentiary, and some people thought Jack ought
to be there, too. Robert Monroe hired him—and
helped him, and kept him straight, and got him started
right—and Jack Blewitt is a hard-working,
respected young man to-day, with every prospect of
a useful and honorable life. There is hardly
a man, woman, or child in White Sands who doesn’t
owe something to Robert Monroe!”
As Kathleen Bell sat down, Malcolm sprang up and held
out his hands.
“Every one of us stand up and sing Auld Lang
Syne,” he cried.
Everybody stood up and joined hands, but one did not
sing. Robert Monroe stood erect, with a great
radiance on his face and in his eyes. His reproach
had been taken away; he was crowned among his kindred
with the beauty and blessing of sacred yesterdays.
When the singing ceased Malcolm’s stern-faced
son reached over and shook Robert’s hands.
“Uncle Rob,” he said heartily, “I
hope that when I’m sixty I’ll be as successful
a man as you.”
“I guess,” said Aunt Isabel, aside to
the little school teacher, as she wiped the tears
from her keen old eyes, “that there’s a
kind of failure that’s the best success.”
Just at dusk, that evening, I had gone upstairs and
put on my muslin gown. I had been busy all day
attending to the strawberry preserving—for
Mary Sloane could not be trusted with that—and
I was a little tired, and thought it was hardly worth
while to change my dress, especially since there was
nobody to see or care, since Hester was gone.
Mary Sloane did not count.
But I did it because Hester would have cared if she
had been here. She always liked to see me neat
and dainty. So, although I was tired and sick
at heart, I put on my pale blue muslin and dressed
my hair.
At first I did my hair up in a way I had always liked;
but had seldom worn, because Hester had disapproved
of it. It became me; but I suddenly felt as
if it were disloyal to her, so I took the puffs down
again and arranged my hair in the plain, old-fashioned
way she had liked. My hair, though it had a good
many gray threads in it, was thick and long and brown
still; but that did not matter—nothing
mattered since Hester was dead and I had sent Hugh
Blair away for the second time.
The Newbridge people all wondered why I had not put
on mourning for Hester. I did not tell them
it was because Hester had asked me not to. Hester
had never approved of mourning; she said that if the
heart did not mourn crape would not mend matters; and
if it did there was no need of the external trappings
of woe. She told me calmly, the night before
she died, to go on wearing my pretty dresses just
as I had always worn them, and to make no difference
in my outward life because of her going.
