"Dear Meta," said her husband, "do not unman me with your tears; our parting will be brief, and I shall return to you with gold--gold! Meta; and you shall yet have a home worthy of you. Bear up, dear Meta--the sun will surely break through the cloud rift. God bless and keep my darling wife."
Poor little Meta! for hours she sat stupefied with sorrow, in the same spot where Will had left her. The sun shone cheerfully in at the little window of her new home, but its beams brought no warmth to Meta's heart. The clinging clasp of Will's arms was still about her neck: Will's kiss was still warm upon her lips, and yet--_she was alone_.
She thought, with a shudder, of the treacherous sea; of the pestilence that walketh in darkness; of a sick-bed, on a foreign shore; of the added bitterness of the death pang, when the eye looks vainly for the _one loved face_; and bowing her face in her hands, she wept convulsively.
"Dear heart! Goodness alive!" said Meta's landlady, peeping in at the door. "Don't take on so; bless me, how long have you been married? you're nothing better than a child _now_. Why didn't you go to Californy with your husband? Where's your folks?--whose picter is that? Ah! I see now, it is meant for you. But why didn't you have on a gown, dear, instead of being wrapped up in them clouds? It makes you look like a sperit. Come now, don't sit moping here; come down stairs and see me work; it will amuse you like. I'm going to make some brown bread. I dare say you never made a bit of brown bread in your life. I put a power of Ingin in mine. I learned that in the country. I was brought up in the country. I hate city folks; they've no more heart than a sexton; much as ever they can stop frolicking long enough to bury one another. They'll sleep, too, like so many tops, while the very next street is all of a blaze, and their poor destitute fellow-creatures are turned naked into the streets. They'll plow right through a burying ground, if they take a notion, harrowing up dead folks, and _live_ ones, too, _I_ guess. And as to Sunday--what with Jews, and Frenchmen, and down Easters, and other foreigners, smoking and driving through the streets, 'tisn't any Sunday at all. Well, I never knew what Sodom meant till I came to the city. Why Lot's wife turned round to take a second look at it, is beyond me. Well, if you won't come down stairs I must leave you, for I smell my bread burning; but do cheer up--you look as lonesome as a pigeon on a spout of a rainy day."