The Harvest of Years | Page 4

carrying them into the "best room," when mother said,
"Why, Emily, we keep our milk pans in the buttery."
"Oh!" I said, turning suddenly and letting my pans fall and scatter. And when I picked them up and collected my senses, I thought, "I cannot tell mother to-night after all, Hal will stay with us." When things were at last in their places, I sauntered out through the lane in the beautiful moonlight, and coming back met Hal who took my hand in his and whispered,
"Tell mother to-morrow, please, I want to go away next month and some things are necessary to be done."
"Have you told father yet?"
"No, but he will not care."
"Father will care," I replied, "but you know since his misfortune, and his conclusion that he cannot do anything but carry on the farm, he seems to have lost his sprightly step and his cheery ways of old."
"Well, Emily," said Hal, "I am no help to him on the farm, and could not be if I tried, and the work I am doing now is anything but satisfying to me."
Then the thought occurred to me, I had no idea of what the boy desired to accomplish, and the question what would you do Hal? was answered in this wise--
"Wait till I've been away six months."
"To build mud houses and fill them with mud people, was your favorite amusement when you were a boy, I remember," I said, and he gave me such a queer look that I started with the impression that came with it, but said no more, and we walked along and went into the house together.
The next day after dinner, when we were cleared up and alone in quiet, I told mother. She was of course covered with surprise, but her words came in wisdom and she said:
"I can imagine what Halbert desires to do, and although the way looks anything but clear, still I know I can trust him anywhere. He is a blessed son and brother, Emily, and I doubt not I am selfish to feel saddened by the thought of his leaving home (and a tear drop fell as she spoke). I only fear he may be sick. His lungs are not very strong."
"What will father say?" I asked.
"Father's heart will miss him but he will not seek to stay an endeavor of his earnest, ambitious boy."
So my trial was not so hard as I had expected, and father was just as wise as mother, and I alone rebellious concerning his departure. I cried night and day whenever I could get a moment to cry in, and I could not help it. How perverse I felt, although doing all I could to forward his departure, which was daily coming nearer, and when the 4th of July came and with it the gala day which the entire country about us enjoyed, I could not and did not go to the pic-nic, or the speech ground, and I succeeded in making all at home nearly as unhappy as myself.
CHAPTER III.
CHANGES.
Some people believe in predestination (or "fore-ordering," as Aunt Ruth used to call it), and some do not. I never knew what I believed about events and their happening, but it was certainly true I learned to know that my efforts to hurry or retard anything were in one sense entirely futile--that is, when I did not work in unison with my surroundings, and made haste only when impelled. If I could have felt thus concerning Hal's departure, I should have been of more service to him, and saved myself from hearing "Oh, Emily, don't," falling as an entreaty from his lips, at sight of my swelled eyes and woeful countenance. I think he was heartily glad of the innovation made in our family circle, which, of itself, was as wonderful to me as the story of Aladdin's Lamp to the mind of a child. It happened so strangely too. Before I tell you of this event I must explain that our family circle consisted of father, mother, Halbert, Ben and myself. It was half past six in the evening of July 8, 18--, and we had just finished supper, when a loud knock was heard at the back door, and opening it we received a letter from the hands of a neighbor, who came over from the post-office and kindly brought our mail with him. We received a good many letters for farming people, and I had kept up a perfect fire of correspondence with Mary Snow ever since she went to the home of her uncle, who lived some twenty miles distant, but this appeared to be a double letter, and mother broke the seal, while we all listened to her as she read it. It is not necessary to quote the whole of it,