Page:The Galaxy, Volume 5.djvu/76

68 even with rejoicing, remembering who had suffered worse afflictions, and praising God that she might share them; but oftenest the woman overcame the saint, and she writhed with her pain, and wept for her son.

It had been one of Elisabetta's troubles after Sebastian's departure, that then she could do nothing more for her child; she could make him nothing to wear in that climate; she had no means to buy him costly presents, had his uncle, in giving everything himself, left her any room; she darned the small socks that he had left, toed off the worn mittens freshly, though the holes had been precious, and laid them all away. Her annuity sufficed to keep her from want, to pay her doctor's bills and Nora's, and the taxes of her pew, leaving her a trifle for charity. On this trifle she never impinged; she would have given up her pew scarcely sooner than her life, so fondly did she count upon the day when she should pass up the broad aisle on her son's arm, in the face of all the gazing congregation. She never thought of the figure she would make, so much was she admiring with the admiring congregation. There was, then, nothing in which she could retrench, and could she retrench, there was equally nothing that she could do with her savings for Sebastian. But at last, one Sunday, as she put off the stiff silk, folded away in silver paper and camphor wood the Indian shawl, and, after feasting her eyes on the lace inside her ancient bonnet, consigned that too to the charge of lock and key—vanities, she knew, and one of her crosses that she could never quite withstand the temptation of enjoying them even on a Sunday; after this was done, and she sat in her clean cap and apron, with her spectacles upon her nose, and her Bible in her lap, there came to her an idea, like an inspiration, she said, in whose contemplation she experienced more satisfaction than in anything that had happened since her boy went away to be a man. She took no butter on her roll that night, and no sugar in her tea, and told Nora that a second drawing of the teapot without any fresh leaves, would do for the next morning—only Nora laughed her to scorn, and prepared her breakfast as usual. Nora loved the little woman with all her big heart; she had opened the door to her when she came home on her wedding day, in her arms had Sebastian first been placed, she had been Elisabetta's servant and her friend through joy and through sorrow; but, for all that, she was in her own line as great a tyrant as a prime minister, and constantly made it a source of congratulation to herself that, unlike the maid who had the poor old widow Gray in charge, she did not give her mistress her tea at four o'clock in the afternoon, and, tucking her up in bed with the first star, be oft herself on an evening gossip. So, when Nora on Saturday night found the pat of butter of the same size as on the previous Sunday evening, and the bowl of sugar at the same level, she began to com-