She thought of
the thousand little things that she might have done for him. She
longed to recall every impatient word to him. His gentle
reproachful eyes were always haunting her. "You must come back,
Toby!" she cried. "You must!"
It was only when body and mind had worn themselves out with
yearning, that a numbness at last crept over her, and out of this
grew a gradual consciousness of things about her and a returning
sense of her obligation to others. She tried to answer in her
old, smiling way and to keep her mind upon what they were saying,
instead of letting it wander away to the past.
Douglas and Mandy were overjoyed to see the colour creeping back
to her cheeks.
She joined the pastor again in his visits to the poor. The women
of the town would often see them passing and would either whisper
to each other, shrug their shoulders, or lift their eyebrows with
smiling insinuations; but Polly and the pastor were too much
absorbed in each other to take much notice of what was going on
about them.
They had not gone for their walk to-day, because Mandy had needed
Polly to help make ready for the social to be held in the Sunday-
school-room to-night.
Early in the afternoon, Polly had seen Douglas shut himself up in
the study, and she was sure that he was writing; so when the
village children stopped in on the way from school for Mandy's
new-made cookies, she used her customary trick to get them away.
Pages:
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87