When she had laid aside her things, no maid yet appearing, the Gilead letter claimed her attention, and she was soon absorbed in it. It told of Keith’s resolution to go to Boston, and gave an inventory of the property on the farm that had been bought with Adam Lawton’s money.
She had also, she said, written for instructions as to its future care; would he take charge, or should she look for some suitable person in the neighbourhood? Receiving no answer, and judging that the letter had either been lost, or else that her cousin had been too busy to consider it, Miss Keith had made a second careful copy and enclosed it in a letter to Mrs. Lawton, saying that time pressed, and she must rely upon her to “jog” Cousin Adam’s memory, or perhaps, as the farm at least stood in Brooke’s name, that she might have some wishes in the matter.
Mrs. Lawton had almost finished reading the inventory of simple furnishings, etc., when Brooke entered. Her mother at once noticed a strange expression in her always candid features, and a new light in her wide-open eyes; but the letters in her lap caught Brooke’s attention, and after she had given a brief history of the doings of the afternoon, the two women, seated side by side, bent their heads over the Cub’s epistle, though the elder already knew it by heart, word for word.
“The poor, poor Cub!” ejaculated Brooke at last, half laughing, and then stopping short, for looking up, she saw tears trembling on her mother’s lashes. “If it were only long ago, we would buy him a horse, and spear, and shield, and smuggle him outside the castle walls at night, and let him gallop away to seek his own fortunes. Do you know, little mother, that, in spite of all the liberty I have, and money in my pocket without the asking, I sometimes feel choked and tied down like this bad boy of ours? It was only an hour ago, when I was sitting in that beautiful picture gallery, that it came over me how so many of the things we do every day seem unreal and like a useless dream. We ourselves arrange or else blindly submit to customs that keep us apart instead of bringing those who love each other together, until life gets to be like those stupid gas fire-logs yonder, all for show—a little feverish heat and unwholesomeness as a result instead of the true thing, though to be sure real logs are more trouble and a greater responsibility to tend.