Mattie:-A Stray Volume III Part 28

"Have I complained?--is there likely to be anything the matter, Ann?"

"Yes, there is. And you'll just tell me, please, what is it!"

"Ann, you forget yourself."

"No, it's you who is forgetting yourself, and me, and all you had a liking and a love for wunst. It's you as has altered so dreffully, that I can only think of one thing to make you different."

"Don't tell me!--don't tell me!" Mattie entreated.

Ann Packet took no heed.

"It's _him_!" she whispered.

Mattie did not answer; she went back to her seat by the toilet-table, and turned her head away from the one faithful to her, to the last. She was vexed that she had not kept her secret closer, and deceived them _all_!

"It's no good telling me it ain't him, Mattie--cos it is!" Ann Packet said, after following Mattie to the table, and taking another chair facing her; "there's nothing else--there can't be nothing else, girl.

Well, I wouldn't grieve because his sight's come back--that's not right!"

"Do you think I grieve for that?" cried Mattie, fired into defence; "oh!

Ann, how can you ever think so badly of me!"

"Then you're afraid that he won't like you any more?"

"How do you know he ever liked me, or said he did?"

"I--I guessed as much."

Ann Packet, we know, possessed a secret as well as Mattie.

"You guessed wrongly."

"I guessed what you did, Mattie--there!"

"I am not always in the right, Ann," was the hard answer; "I am a foolish woman, ever ready to drop into the snare of a few fine words!"

Ann scarcely understood her; but she went on resolutely--

"You think he's tired of you--that it won't come right now. Why not?"

"Nothing can come right out of nothing," said Mattie, pa.s.sionately, and not too clearly; "I can't be worried like this, Ann. I have nothing to tell you; I am what I have always been. If there be a difference, it is only that I am getting older, and more world-worn. Won't you believe me?"

"No, I won't. I think I know you well enough by this time, and aren't to be _done_ by any reason short of what's a true un. Oh! Mattie gal, you're not happy; you, who have done so much for happiness to other people--and this shan't be, if I can help it! You and Mr. Hinchford must get married; and if there's been a quarrel, _that'll_ mend, it."

"Mr. Hinchford and I will never marry, Ann."

"You mean it?"

"Yes."

"I don't see why," said Ann, reflectively.

"Mr. Hinchford will marry Harriet Wesden--they are old lovers, and true ones."

Ann Packet looked fixedly for awhile at Mattie, and then burst forth:

"Let him! Pr'aps he's fitter for her than you, if he's weak-minded and babyish, and can't tell what's best for him. Let him pack up his traps and go--you can do without him." Ann Packet, carried away by the feelings of the moment, went on, in a higher key. "You're too good for him, and the likes of him, and ain't agoing begging because a pink-faced gal is set afore ye. You're young yet. You've people to love you, and take care on you--you shan't be lonely, and you shall get over all your disappintments and be as happy as the day is long. It isn't for you, Mattie, to fret yourself to death because a little trouble's come, and you can't shake it off yet--you'll show 'em that you've never been a fretting, and that you've got a consolation yet, that their goings on can't take away!"

"Well, Ann, where would be your consolation?" asked Mattie.

"Where you taught me to find it, big words and all--where you will never lose it, Mattie, good as you've growed."

There was something touching in the manner with which Ann Packet s.n.a.t.c.hed from the toilet-table the little Bible that always had a place there, and laid it suddenly in Mattie's lap. Mattie s.h.i.+vered, even cowered somewhat at the demonstration; it had been unexpected as that interview, and for the first time in her life Ann Packet took the vantage ground, and Mattie looked up to _her_.

"When you turned good, Mattie," said Ann, "you turned to _that_--you read it to me, and tried to make me read it, telling me that there was comfort to be found there for my loneliness. I found it--so will you, child. _You_ can't miss what you found me!"

"It does not follow," murmured Mattie.

"Yes it does," said Ann, who would not abate one jot of her a.s.sertions; "with _you_, who ain't like tother people, and who never was. You liked tother people better than yourself, and so got posed upon--but you're all the better for it--lor bless you!--you'll see that in _there_. And, Mattie, there's your father and me, still--we shan't drop away from you.

The likes of me," she added, after a little more reflection, "isn't much to brag on, but you'll find me allus true--that's something."

"Everything!"

"You ain't like me, with no one to look to--with no one but you in all the world that would do me a good turn if I wished it ever so. With you there isn't one but'd go anywhere to help you, knowing what a contented soul you are. And when it comes to you, allus so cheerful, getting mopish--you, who finds somethin' good in things that others fret at, and makes us warm and comfurble instead o' s.h.i.+vering with fright--why, it's sixes and sevens all a topsy turvy anyhow, and no one to look up to nowhere!"

"I must come back to my old self, if I have wandered from it so much that your honest heart is touched by the change, Ann," said Mattie.

"Perhaps I have been gloomy without a cause--perhaps you are right and I am wrong--though I don't confess to all your implications, mind--and from you I can bear to hear my lesson better than from others at this time. Ann, I'm not going to break my heart."

"G.o.d bless you! I knew that."

"I'm going to be just my old self again--nothing more. Not quite that, suddenly, but finding my way back, as it were. There, you'll leave me now--to think."

"Only to think?" said Ann, with a wistful look at the holy volume in her lap; "it's too much thinking that has done this harm."

"To think what is best, Ann," said Mattie, rising, "and, failing that, to pray for it; there, leave me now. Don't fear for me ever again."

"And I haven't done wrong in talking of all this--you were angry when I first comed in, Mattie?"

"I am glad that you came now--I must have been aging very rapidly to have alarmed one who always had such trust in me. It's all over now!"

When Ann Packet had withdrawn, Mattie clasped her hands together and cried again, "It is all over!" as though for ever some hope had been dismissed rather than some fear. Hopes and fears had perhaps gone down the stream of time together, and it was impossible to arrest the sighs for the fair blossoms which had been once. But she was stronger from that day; Mattie was not likely to harden, and it had only needed one warm-hearted counsellor to turn her from the wrong path she was pursuing. The right counsellor had come--a humble messenger, but a true one; one to whom Mattie could listen without shame.

"I was never fit for him--in his new estate, I might have brought him shame rather than happiness--and it was his happiness I tried for, not my own!"

She sank down on her knees and prayed as honest Ann had wished. But she did not pray for the best to happen as she had promised. She knew what was best for her and others--so far as it is possible to know that--and she asked for strength to do her best.

CHAPTER VI.