My Mothers Rival | Page 9

dead leaves were whirled in the autumn winds,
and still my mother lay helpless. If this one year seemed so long, what
would a lifetime be?
As some of her strength returned it seemed to me that mother grew
more and more charming. She laughed and enjoyed all our care of her,
and when the wonderful chair came from London, in which she could
go round the garden, and could be wheeled from one room to another,
she was as delighted as a child.
"Still," she said to my father, "it seems to me a pity almost, Roland, to
have sent to London for this. I shall surely be able to walk soon."
He turned away from her with tears in his eyes.
A month or two afterward we were both sitting with her, and she said,

quite suddenly:
"It seems a long time since I began to lie here. I am afraid it will be
many months before I get well again. I think I shall resign myself to
proper invalids' fashions. I will have some pretty lace caps, Laura, and
we will have more books." Then a wistful expression crossed her face
and she said: "I would give anything on earth to walk, even only for ten
minutes, by the side of the river; as I lie here I think so much about it. I
know it in all its moods--when the wind hurries it and the little
wavelets dash along; when the tide is deep and the water overflows
among the reeds and grasses; when it is still and silent and the shadows
of the stars lie on it, and when the sun turns it into a stream of living
gold, I know it well."
"You will see it again soon," said my father, in a broken voice. "I will
drive you down any time you like."
But my mother said nothing. I think she had seen the tears in Sir
Roland's eyes. From that day she seemed to grow more reconciled to
her lot. Now let me add a tribute to my father. His devotion to her was
something marvelous; he seemed to love her better in her helpless state
than he had done when she was full of health and spirits. I admired him
so much for it during the first year of my mother's illness. He never left
her. Hunting, shooting, fishing, dinner parties, everything was given up
that he might sit with her.
One of the drawing rooms, a beautiful, lofty apartment looking over the
park to the hills beyond, was arranged as my mother's room; there all
that she loved best was taken.
The one next to it was made into a sleeping room for her, so that she
should never have to be carried up and down stairs. A room for her
maid came next. And my father had a door so placed that the chair
could be wheeled from the rooms through the glass doors into the
grounds.
"You think, then," she said, "that I shall not grow well just yet,
Roland?"

"No, my darling, not just yet," he replied.
What words of mine could ever describe what that sick room became?
It was a paradise of beautiful flowers, singing birds, little fragrant
fountains and all that was most lovely. After a time visitors came, and
my mother saw them; the poor came, and she consoled them.
"My lady" was with them once more, never more to walk into their
cottages and look at the rosy children. They came to her now, and that
room became a haven of refuge.
So it went on for three years, and I woke up one morning to find it was
my thirteenth birthday.

CHAPTER V.
That day both my parents awoke to the fact that I must have more
education. I could not go to school; to have taken me from my mother
would have been death to both of us. They had a long conversation, and
it was decided that the wisest plan would be for me to have a
governess--a lady who would at the same time be a companion to my
mother. I am quite sure that at first she did not like it, but afterward she
turned to my father, with a sweet, loving smile.
"It will relieve you very much," she said, "and give you time to get
out."
"I shall never leave you," he said, "no matter who comes."
Several letters were written; my father gave himself unheard-of trouble;
and after some weeks of doubt, hesitation and correspondence, a
governess was selected for me. She had been living with Lady Bucarest,
and was most highly recommended; she was amiable, accomplished,
good tempered and well qualified for the duties Lady Tayne wished her
to fulfill.
"What a paragon!" cried