Robert Hardys Seven Days | Page 5

had evidently parted with someone at the door. Mrs. Hardy went
out into the hallway.
"Hush, girls, your father is asleep! You know how he feels to be
awakened suddenly by noise. But he has been waiting up for you."
"Then I guess we'll go upstairs without bidding him good-night," said
Clara abruptly. "I don't want to be lectured about going over to the
Caxtons'."
"No; I want to see you both and have a little talk with you. Come in
here." Mrs. Hardy drew the two girls into the front room and pulled the
curtains together over the arch opening into the room where Mr. Hardy
lay. "Now tell me, girls, why did your father forbid your going over to
the Caxtons'? I did not know of it until to-night. Has it something to do
with James?"
Neither of the girls said anything for a minute. Then, Bess, who was the
younger of the two and famous for startling the family with very

sensational remarks, replied, "James and Clara are engaged; and they
are going to be married tomorrow."
Mrs. Hardy looked at Clara, who grew very red in the face, and then, to
the surprise of her mother and Bess, the girl burst out into a violent fit
of crying. Mrs. Hardy gathered her into her arms as in the olden times
when she was a little child and soothed her into quietness.
"Tell me all about it, dear. I did not know you cared for James in that
way."
"But I do," sobbed Clara. "And father guessed something and forbade
us going there any more. But I didn't think he would mind it if Bess and
I went just this one night. I couldn't help it, anyway. Mother, isn't it
right for people to love each other?"
"Tisn't proper to talk about such things on Sunday," said Bess,
solemnly.
"Clara," said Mrs. Hardy, "why, you're only a child yet! Is it true that
James is--why, he is only a boy!"
"He is twenty-one and I am eighteen, and he's earning forty dollars a
month in the office and is one of the best stenographers in the State.
We've talked it over, and I wish we could be married to-morrow, so!"
Clara burst out with it all at once, while Bess remarked quietly:--
"Yes, they're real sensible, and I think James is nice; but when I marry I
want more than forty dollars a month for candy alone. And then he isn't
particularly handsome."
"He is too!" cried Clara. "And he's good and brave and splendid, and I'd
rather have him than a thousand such men as Lancey Cummings!
Mother, I don't want money. It hasn't made you happy!"
"Hush, dear!" Mrs. Hardy felt as if a blow had smitten her in the face.
She was silent then.

Clara put her arms around her mother and whispered: "Forgive me,
mother! I didn't mean to hurt you. But I am so unhappy."
Unhappy! And yet the girl was just beginning to blossom out towards
the face of God under the influence of that most divine and tender and
true feeling that ever comes to a girl who knows that a true, brave man
loves her with all his soul. And some people would have us leave this
subject to the flippant novelist instead of treating it as Christ did when
He said, "For this cause [that is, for love] shall a man leave his father
and mother, and shall cleave unto his wife."
Mrs. Hardy was on the point of saying something when the sound of
peculiar steps on the stairs was heard, and shortly after Alice pushed
the curtains aside and came in. Alice was the oldest girl in the family.
She was a cripple, the result of an accident when a child, and she
carried a crutch, using it with much skill and even grace. The minute
she entered the room she saw something was happening, but she simply
said:--
"Mother, isn't it a little strange father sleeps so soundly? I went up to
him and spoke to him just now, thinking he was just lying there, and he
didn't answer, and then I saw he was asleep. But I never knew him to
sleep so Sunday night. He usually reads up in the study."
"Perhaps he is sick; I will go and see."
Mrs. Hardy rose and went into the other room; and just then the
younger boy, Will, came downstairs. He said something to his mother
as he passed through the room, carrying one of his books in his hand
and then came in where the girls were.
"Say, Alice, translate this passage for me, will you? Confound the old
Romans anyway! What do I care about the way they fought their old
battles and built their