Saxe Holms Stories | Page 6

strange, solemn presence of death. But her
brothers had not been her companions. She began suddenly to feel a
sense of new and greater relationship to them, now that she thought of
them as angels; she was half terrified and bewildered at the feeling that
now, for the first time, they were near to her.
On the evening after Sam's funeral, as Reuben was sitting on the store
steps, with his head buried in his hands, a neighbor drove up and threw
him a letter.
"It's been lyin' in the office a week or more, Merrill said, and he
reckoned I'd better bring it up to you," he called out, as he drove on.
"It might lie there forever, for all my goin' after it," thought Reuben to
himself, as he picked it up from the dust; "it's no good news, I'll be
bound."
But it was good news. The letter was from Jane's oldest sister, who had
married only a few years before, and gone to live in a sea-port town on
the New England coast. Her husband was an old captain, who had

retired from his seafaring life with just money enough to live on, in a
very humble way, in an old house which had belonged to his
grandfather. He had lost two wives; his children were all married or
dead, and in his loneliness and old age he had taken for his third wife
the gentle, quiet elder sister who had brought up Jane Miller. She was a
gray-haired, wrinkled spinster woman when she went into Captain
Melville's house; but their life was by no means without romance.
Husband and home cannot come to any womanly heart too late for
sentiment and happiness to put forth pale flowers.
Emma Melville wrote offering the Millers a home; their last misfortune
had but just come to her knowledge, for Jane had been for months too
much out of heart to write to her relatives. Emma wrote:--
"We are very poor, too; we haven't anything but the house, and a little
money each year to buy what we need to eat and wear, the plainest sort.
But the house is large; Captain Melville and me never so much as set
foot up-stairs. If you can manage to live on the upper floor, you're more
than welcome, we both say; and we hope you won't let any pride stand
in the way of your coming. It will do us good to have more folks in the
house, and it ain't as if it cost us anything, for we shouldn't never be
willing, neither me nor Captain Melville, to rent the rooms to strangers,
not while we've got enough to live on without."
There was silence for some minutes between Reuben and Jane and
Draxy after this letter had been read. Jane looked steadily away from
Reuben. There was deep down in the patient woman's heart, a latent
pride which was grievously touched. Reuben turned to Draxy; her lips
were parted; her cheeks were flushed; her eyes glowed. "Oh, father, the
sea!" she exclaimed. This was her first thought; but in a second more
she added, "How kind, how good of Aunt Emma's husband!"
"Would you like to go, my daughter?" said Reuben, earnestly.
"Why, I thought of course we should go!" exclaimed Draxy, turning
with a bewildered look to her mother, who was still silent. "What else
is the letter sent for? It means that we must go."

Her beautiful simplicity was utterly removed from any false sense of
obligation. She accepted help as naturally from a human hand as from
the sunshine; she would give it herself, so far as she had power, just as
naturally and just as unconsciously.
There was very little discussion about the plan. Draxy's instinct
overbore all her father's misgiving, and all her mother's unwillingness.
"Oh, how can you feel so, Ma," she exclaimed more than once. "If I
had a sister I could not. I love Aunt Emma already next to you and
father; and you don't know how much we can do for her after we get
there, either. I can earn money there, I know I can; all we need."
Mrs. Melville had written that there were many strangers in the town in
the summer, and that she presumed Draxy could soon find all the work
she wished as seamstress; also that there were many chances of work
for a man who was accustomed to gardening, as, of course, Reuben
must be.
Draxy's sanguine cheerfulness was infectious; even Jane began to look
forward with interest to the new home; and Reuben smiled when Draxy
sang. Lawton and Reuben were to be left behind; that was the only
regret; but it was merely anticipating by a very little the separation
which was inevitable, as