Page:Further Chronicles of Avonlea (1920).djvu/300

268 “I didn’t — not a great deal,” she answered me. “But the night didn’t seem long; no, it seemed too short. I was thinking of a great many things. What time is it, Aunt Rachel?”

“Five o'clock.”

“Then in six hours more —”

She suddenly sat up in her bed, her great, thick rope of brown hair falling over her white shoulders, and flung her arms about me, and burst into tears on my old breast. I petted and soothed her, and said not a word; and, after a while, she stopped crying; but she still sat with her head so that I couldn’t see her face.

“We didn’t think it would be like this once, did we, Aunt Rachel?” she said, very softly.

“It shouldn’t be like this, now,” I said. I had to say it. I never could hide the thought of that marriage, and I couldn’t pretend to. It was all her stepmother’s doings — right well I knew that. My dearie would never have taken Mark Foster else.

“Don’t let us talk of that,” she said, soft and beseeching, just the same way she used to speak when she was a baby-child and wanted to coax me into something. “Let us talk about the old days — and him.”

“I don’t see much use in talking of him, when you're going to marry Mark Foster to-day,” I said.

But she put her hand on my mouth.