Chapter XIV: Part III

It was about that time that Hart Hammond leaned back in the easy chair in his mother's luxurious sitting-room and asked,—"Mother, what are we going to do with Dilly this winter?"

"Do with her?" repeated Mrs. Hammond, smiling on him. "She is doing for herself by this time; as nice a little housekeeper as her father ever imagined."

"I know, but—we don't intend to drop her in this way, do we?"

"I don't want to drop her," said Mrs. Hammond earnestly; "she is a dear little girl, whom I shall always love; but I don't see my way clear to doing what I would like for her. It would be pleasant to keep her with Effie all winter; I feel safe when the child is in her care; but she ought to be in school."

"That's just it," said Hart decidedly; "she must be in school, of course; she is a smart girl and ought to have an education. But she tells me she must keep house for her father."

"So she must, I suppose, unless some other way can be contrived."

"Some other way 'must' be contrived; she is too young to have the care of a family on her shoulders. Why couldn't her father take his meals here, and have the room over the carriage-house for himself? If we give the gardens into his charge, we ought to have him at hand; it would be much more convenient for you."

"In that case what would become of Dilly?"

Now aunt Helen, sitting in her easy chair in her lovely white wrapper, leaned forward resting her head on her hand and listened to this and much other talk which followed; and thought, while she listened.

Aunt Helen, who had been all her life an invalid; having teachers come to her in her intervals of rest from pain, but never going to school a day in her life; never running and frolicking through the world like other girls, always belonging to easy chairs, and couches, and wrappers, and slippers; aunt Helen, all alone in the world, with much money, much leisure, and much pain. She had been on Monteagle with her sister-in-law during the last three weeks of their stay, and had admired the deft-handed little maiden who took such thoughtful care of Effie, and was always ready with a helpful hand for her. Now she listened and thought, and at last she spoke: "Give her to me!"

"Who?"

"This little girl, this Dilly. I like her very much; and it has occurred to me that I might have her do for me the thing which I have never been able to do for myself. I wanted to go to school, and to study music, and to do a dozen other things which I could not; why not have her do them for me? It is an excellent idea; I wonder I have never thought of it before. That is just it; Dilly shall live my life for me; the part of it I planned to live, and never could carry out."

That was the way the conversation began; I have no space in which to tell you the rest of it; the long, long talk which followed; the plan to have Dilly come next door to aunt Helen's own beautiful home which it pleased her to keep up in the style it had worn when father and mother were living. Dilly should be her little friend and companion nights and mornings, and a busy schoolgirl during the day; and aunt Helen would live through her the life which had been planned for her own girlhood and never carried out.

Hart was exceedingly pleased. "I like it for her sake," he said, "she deserves such advantages, and will make more of them than most girls would; she is going to make a grand woman some day; and then I like it for you, aunt Helen; I know she will be a comfort to you. Oh! Her father will consent. I have been talking with him this afternoon about her going to school; he wants it very much, but cannot see his way clear to sending her; she is the very apple of his eye."

Well, it was all arranged, so far as those three people could arrange it, that night. What Dilly said when she heard the story, and what her father said and thought and did, I cannot tell; you must imagine it. Nothing so unutterably wonderful had ever happened to a girl before; so both Dilly and her father think.

This one sentence I must give you; it tells a great deal.

"Father," said Dilly, having been silent and thoughtful for some time, "I thought when I came down from Monteagle, that it was not likely I would ever see another mountain; but it seems to me now as though you and I were going to live on mountains all the time."

So you will see that all of our little party were pleased and glad. No, not all; I forget poor little Effie Hammond, who in her fall coat, buttoned from head to foot, her new fall hat pushed back on her yellow head, and her worst-looking doll grasped by the neck, wandered disconsolately, all the long, cool days in search of Dilly, and missed her every minute.

"How glad Effie will be to have Dilly for a next door neighbor," said aunt Helen, as the days went by, and the plans for the winter began to take shape. "Many a happy hour she will give the child."

"Yes, indeed!" said mamma. "She loves Effie almost as much as Effie does her; and it is really pitiful to see how disconsolate the baby is without her. I have tried to make her understand; but I don't think she fully realizes anything but that Dilly is away and she wants her."

"When is Dilly to come to aunt Helen?" asked Hart, that evening, as he lifted Effie on his knee for a frolic.

"On Monday, I believe; the school opens on Wednesday, you know; and her father thinks they can close up their dreary little home Monday morning."

"Then we know two people who will be glad, don't we Effie?" Hart said, tossing her toward the ceiling.

"You are almost as fond of her as Effie is, I believe," said the smiling mother.

"I am 'very fond' of her," said Hart, "I have reason to be."

Then the mother bestowed on him a most loving look, out of which all the wistful unrest was gone, and said with emphasis, "So have I."