There was a long silence during which the young hands gripped hers closely, and the young thoughts grew strangely wise with insight into human life and all its joys and sorrows. They were thinking out in detail just what their aunt had missed, the sweet things that every woman hopes for, and thinks about alone with God; of love, strong care, little children, and a home. She had missed it all; and yet she had its image in her heart, and had been true to her first thought of it all the years. Now, when it was offered her again, she would not give up the old love for a new, would not take what was left of life. She would wait till the morning broke and her boy met her on the other shore.
Suddenly, as they thought, strong young arms encircled her, and held her close in a dear embrace.
"Then you're ours, Cloudy, all ours, for the rest of down here, aren't you?" half whispered Leslie.
"Yes, dear, as long as you need me--_want_ me," she finished.
"We shall want you always, Cloudy!" said Allison in a clear man's voice of decision. "Put that down forever, Cloudy Jewel. You are our mother from now on and we want you always."
"That is dear," said Julia Cloud; "but"--a resignation in her voice--"some day you will marry, and then you will not need me any more and I shall find something to do somewhere."
Two fierce young things rose up in arms at once.
"Put that right out of your head, Cloudy Jewel!" cried Leslie. "You shan't say it again! If I thought any man could be mean enough not to feel as I do about you, I would never marry him; so there! I would never marry anybody!"
"My wife will love you as much as I do!" said Allison with conviction. "I shall never love anybody that doesn't. You'll see!"
And so with loving arms about her and tender words of fierce assertion they convinced her at last, and the bond that held them was only strengthened by the little tension it had sustained.
Professor Armitage came no more to the little pink-and-white house; but Julia Cloud was happy with her children, and they were content together. The happy days moved on.
"I don't see how you get time for that Christian Endeavor Society of yours, Cloud," said one of the professors to Allison. "I hear you're the moving spirit in it; yet you never fall down on your class work. How do you manage it? I'd like to put some of my other students onto your ways of planning."