第7章

"Oh! Mr.Freeman, what is it?" I cried out."Has anything happened to father? Is he hurt? Where is he?""He is in the carriage," he said.We are taking him home.He has had a fall."Then we went on in silence.The sailors were carrying father in as we reached the house.They laid him on the sofa, we saw his poor head...

Nov.23.-I will try to write the rest now.Father was alive but insensible.He had fallen down into the hold of the ship, and the sailors heard him groaning there.He lived three hours after they brought him home.Mr.Freeman and all our friends were very kind.But we like best to be alone, we three, mother and James and I.Poor mother looks twenty years older, but she is so patient, and so concerned for us, and has such a smile of welcome for every one that comes in, that it breaks my heart to see her.

Nov.25.-Mother spoke to me very seriously to-day, about controlling myself more.She said she knew this was my first real sorrow, and how hard it was to bear it.But that she was afraid I should become insane some time, if I indulged myself in such passions of grief.And she said, too, that when friends came to see us, full of sympathy and eager to say or do something for our comfort, it was our duty to receive them with as much cheerfulness as possible.

I said they, none of them, had anything to say that did not provoke me.

"It is always a trying task to visit the afflicted," mother said, "and you make it doubly hard to your friends by putting on a gloomy, forbidding air, and by refusing to talk of your dear father, as if you were resolved to keep your sorrow all to yourself.""I can't smile when I am so unhappy," I said.

A good many people have been here to-day.Mother has seen them all, though she looked ready to drop.Mrs.Bates said to me, in her little, weak, watery voice:

"Your mother is wonderfully sustained, dear.I hope you feel reconciled to God's will.Rebellion is most displeasing to Him, dear."I made no answer.It is very easy for people to preach.Let me see how they behave when they their turn to lose their friends.

Mrs.Morris said this was a very mysterious dispensation.But that she was happy to see that Mother was meeting it with so much firmness."As for myself," she went on, "I was quite broken down by my dear husband's death.I did not eat as much as would feed a bird, for nearly a week.But some people have so much feeling; then again others are so firm.Your mother is so busy talking with Mrs.March that I won't interrupt her to say good-bye.I came prepared to suggest several things that I thought would comfort her; but perhaps she has thought of them herself."I could have knocked her down.Firm, indeed! Poor mother.

After they had all gone, I made her lie down, she looked so tired and worn out.

Then, I could not help telling her what Mrs.Morris had said.

She only smiled a little, but said nothing.

"I wish you would ever flare up, mother," I said.

She smiled again, and said she had nothing to "flare up" about.

"Then I shall do it for you!" I cried.To hear that namby-pamby woman, who is about as capable of understanding you as an old cat, talking about your being firm! You see what you get by being quiet and patient! People would like you much better if you refused to be comforted, and wore a sad countenance.""Dear Katy," said mother, "it is not my first object in life to make people like me."By this time she looked so pale that I was frightened.Though she is so cheerful, and things go on much as they did before, I believe she has got her death-blow.If she has, then I hope I have got mine.And yet I am not fit to die.I wish I was, and I wish I could die.I have lost all interest in everything, and don't care what becomes of me.

Nov.23.-I believe I shall go crazy unless people stop coming here, hurling volleys of texts at mother and at me.When soldiers drop wounded on the battle-field, they are taken up tenderly and carried "to the rear," which means, I suppose, out of sight and sound.Is anybody mad enough to suppose it will do them any good to hear Scripture quoted sermons launched at them before their open, bleeding wounds are staunched?