David Fleming's Forgiveness. Margaret M. Robertson
about the place; I’ll make it all right, and Jacob won’t be hard on them.”
And so the old man rambled on, till the talk turned to other matters, and Mrs. Jacob kept the rest of her remarks for Elizabeth’s private ear.
“I am so glad you like Mr. Maxwell, Elizabeth. I was afraid you would not; you are so fastidious, you know, and he seems to have so little to say for himself.”
“I like him very much, and so does Clifton,” said Elizabeth, waiting for more.
“I am very glad. He seems to be having a good influence on Clifton. He hasn’t been in any trouble this time, at all, has he? How thankful you must be. Jacob is pleased. I only hope it may last.”
The discussion of her younger brother’s delinquencies, real or supposed, was almost the only thing that irritated Elizabeth beyond her power of concealment; and if she had been in her sister-in-law’s house, this would have been the moment when she would have drawn her visit to a close. Now she could only keep silence.
“I hope Clifton may do well next year,” went on Mrs. Jacob; “you will miss him, and so shall we.”
“We must do as well as we can without him. In summer he will be home for good, I hope.”
“Yes, if he should conclude to settle down steadily to business. Time will show, and this winter we have Mr. Maxwell. It depends some on Miss Martha Langden, I suppose, how long we shall have him in our house. You have heard all about that, I suppose?” said she, smiling significantly.
Elizabeth smiled too, but shook her head.
“I have heard the name,” said she.
“Well, you must not ask me about her. I only know that she gets a good many letters from Gershom about this time. It is not to be spoken of yet.”
She rose to go, and Elizabeth went with her to the door, and she laughed to herself as she followed her with her eye down the street. She had heard Miss Martha Langden’s name once. It was on the night when Mr. Maxwell called on his way from the Hill-farm. He had said that he liked Miss Betsey, and that she reminded him of one of his best friends, Miss Martha Langden, one who had been his mother’s friend when he was a child.
Miss Elizabeth laughed again as she turned to go into the house, and she might have laughed all the same, if she had known that the frequent letters to Miss Martha Langden never went without a little note to some one very different from Miss Martha. But she did not know this till long after.
Clifton Holt went back to college again, and Elizabeth prepared for a quiet winter. She knew that, as in other winters, she would be held responsible for a certain amount of entertainment to the young people of the village in the way of gigantic sewing-circles, and no less gigantic evening parties. But these could not fall often to her turn, and they were not exciting affairs, even when the whole responsibility of them fell on herself, as was the case when her brother was away. So it was a very quiet winter to which she looked forward.
And because she did not dread the utter quiet, as she had done in former winters, and because she was able to dismiss from her thoughts, with very little consideration of the matter, a tempting invitation to pass a month or two in the city of Montreal, she fancied she was drawing near to that period in a woman’s life, when she is supposed to be becoming content with the existing order of things, when the dreams and hopes, and expectations vague and sweet, which make so large a part in girlish happiness, give place to graver and more earnest thoughts of life and duty, to a juster estimate of what life has to give, and an acquiescent acceptance of the lot which she has not chosen, but which has come to her in it. It is not very often that so desirable a state of mind and heart comes to girls of four-and-twenty. It certainly had not come to Elizabeth. However, it gave her pleasure—and a little pain as well—to think so, and it was a good while before she found out that she had made a mistake.
As for Mr. Maxwell, he was “coming to himself,” as Mrs. Fleming had predicted. His health improved, and as he grew familiar with his new circumstances, the despondency that had weighed him down was dispelled. Before the snow came, he was making visits among the people, without any one to keep him in countenance. Not regular pastoral visits, but quite informal ones, to the farmer in his pasture or wood-lot, or as he followed his oxen over the autumn fields. He dropped now and then into the workshop of Samuel Green, the carpenter, and exchanged a word with John McNider as he passed his forge, where he afterward often stopped to have a talk. The first theological discussion he had in Gershom was held in Peter Longley’s shoe-shop, one morning when he found that amiable sceptic alone and disposed—as he generally was—for a declaration of his rather peculiar views of doctrine and practice; and his first temperance lecture was given to an audience of one, as he drove in Mark Varney’s ox-cart over that poor man’s dreary and neglected fields.
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