“I’ll sit here awhile,” said Cephas, pulling his spectacle case from his vest pocket. “I haven’t read the paper to-night.”
“I’ll sit here, too,” said Rody, rousing herself to a decision. “Somehow I don’t want to go to bed. I don’t believe it’s nine o’clock yet. I wish the clock would strike. I wish something would make a noise.”
“It’s a quarter of nine,” replied Affy, lowering her sister slowly down into her chair. “It will soon strike.”
“Take this thing off,” commanded Rody, tugging at the shawl with her weak right hand. “You bundle me up as if I was a baby.”
“There’s a carriage coming,” said Cephas, bending his head and half shutting his eyes to listen; “he’s come, Affy.”
“Who’s come?” demanded Aunt Rody, in shrill tone. “Who comes at this time of night?”
“The minister; he was coming to bring Judith for an hour or two,” Cephas answered, reassuringly. “She didn’t come yesterday. Don’t you want to see her?”
“Just for a look; I don’t want her to stay, I don’t want anybody to stay.”
Roger Kenney and Judith entered quietly; Judith shrank from the old woman as she stood for an instant beside her chair. Roger drew a chair nearer and took Aunt Rody’s hand into his own. The nerveless hand lay in his as if glad of the warmth and strength; as he talked, Roger clasped and unclasped his hand over hers that she might feel the motion and life of his fingers.
“I’m glad to see you, Aunt Rody,” he said in a voice which was a tonic.
“I’m glad to see you,” she replied, with the flicker of a smile about her lips.
“It _is_ troubled; it is full of trouble. It’s Affy and Cephas; they are deceiving me. They want to get married and deceive me more and more.”
“Shall I tell you how we’ll stop that?” asked Roger, bending confidentially toward her.
“Let me marry them, and then you will never think they are deceiving you again. What is the reason they are deceiving you now?”
“Because they think I stand between them; they think I’ve always stood between them,” she said, piteously; “but I never did. I was seeking their good.”
“But don’t you think you have sought their good long enough?” he asked persuasively.
“Yes; I’ve worn myself out for their good. I’m worn out now; they’ll have to do for themselves, after this.”