“I wish you—could take me right through the door with you,” whispered Emily.
“After a little while you won’t wish that. You have yet to learn how kind time is. And life has something for you—I feel it. Go forward to meet it fearlessly, dear. I know you don’t feel like that just now—but you will remember my words by and by.”
“I feel just now,” said Emily, who couldn’t bear to hide anything from Father, “that I don’t like God any more.”
Douglas Starr laughed—the laugh Emily liked best. It was such a dear laugh—she caught her breath over the dearness of it. She felt his arms tightening round her.
“Yes, you do, honey. You can’t help liking God. He is Love itself, you know. You mustn’t mix Him up with Ellen Greene’s God, of course.”
Emily didn’t know exactly what Father meant. But all at once she found that she wasn’t afraid any longer—and the bitterness had gone out of her sorrow, and the unbearable pain out of her heart. She felt as if love was all about her and around her, breathed out from some great, invisible, hovering Tenderness. One couldn’t be afraid or bitter where love was—and love was everywhere. Father was going through the door—no, he was going to lift a curtain—she liked that thought better, because a curtain wasn’t as hard and fast as a door—and he would slip into that world of which the flash had given her glimpses. He would be there in its beauty—never very far away from her. She could bear anything if she could only feel that Father wasn’t very far away from her—just beyond that wavering curtain.
Douglas Starr held her until she fell asleep; and then in spite of his weakness he managed to lay her down in her little bed.
“She will love deeply—she will suffer terribly—she will have glorious moments to compensate—as I have had. As her mother’s people deal with her, so may God deal with them,” he murmured brokenly.
III
A Hop Out of Kin
Douglas Starr lived two weeks more. In after years when the pain had gone out of their recollection, Emily thought they were the most precious of her memories. They were beautiful weeks—beautiful and not sad. And one night, when he was lying on the couch in the sitting-room, with Emily beside him in the old wing-chair, he went past the curtain—went so quietly and easily that Emily did not know he was gone until she suddenly felt the strange stillness of the room—there was no breathing in it but her own.
“Father—Father!” she cried. Then she screamed for Ellen.
Ellen Greene told the Murrays when they came that Emily had behaved real well, when you took everything into account. To be sure, she had cried all night and hadn’t slept a wink; none of the Maywood people who came flocking kindly in to help could comfort her; but when morning came her tears were all shed. She was pale and quiet and docile.
“That’s right, now,” said Ellen, “that’s what comes of being properly prepared. Your pa was so mad at me for warning you that he wasn’t rightly civil to me since—and him a dying man. But I don’t hold any grudge against him. I did my duty. Mrs. Hubbard’s fixing up a black dress for you and it’ll be ready by supper time. Your ma’s people will be here tonight, so they’ve telegraphed, and I’m bound they’ll find you looking respectable. They’re well off and they’ll provide for you. Your pa hasn’t left a cent but there ain’t any debts, I’ll say that for him. Have you been in to see the body?”
“Don’t call him that,” cried Emily, wincing. It was horrible to hear Father called that.
“Why not? If you ain’t the queerest child! He makes a better looking corpse than I thought he would, what with being so wasted and all. He was always a pretty man, though too thin.”
“Ellen Greene,” said Emily suddenly, “if you say any more of—those things—about Father, I will put the black curse on you!”
Ellen Greene stared.
“I don’t know what on earth you mean. But that’s no way to talk to me, after all I’ve done for you. You’d better not let the Murrays hear you talking like that or they won’t want much to do with you. The black curse indeed! Well, here’s gratitude!”
Emily’s eyes smarted. She was just a lonely, solitary little creature and she felt very friendless. But she was not at all remorseful for what she had said to Ellen and she was not going to pretend she was.
“Come you here and help me wash these dishes,” ordered Ellen. “It’ll do you good to have something to take up your mind and then you won’t be after putting curses on people who have worked their fingers to the bone for you.”
Emily, with an eloquent glance at Ellen’s hands, went and got the dish towel.
“Your hands are fat and pudgy,” she said. “The bones don’t show at all.”
“Never mind sassing back! It’s awful, with your poor pa dead in there. But if your Aunt Ruth takes you she’ll soon cure you of that.”
“Is Aunt Ruth going to take me?”
“I don’t know, but she ought to. She’s a widow with no chick or child, and well-to-do.”
“I don’t think I want Aunt Ruth to take me,” said Emily deliberately, after a moment’s reflection.
“Well, you won’t
