Page:The Granite Monthly Volume 1.djvu/305

 MARY'S REWARD.

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��you are. Lay aside your work now and sing some of those dear old home songs ; my heart, seems so full of them to-night."

Mary laid aside her work, and, arising, she bent over her mother and pressed a kiss upon the thin cheek, and then seat- ed herself at the piano. She was not a skilled performer, but she played and sang simply and sweetly one piece after another, closing at length with that old, yet ever new song, " Home, Sweet Home." She arose from the piano and drew a hassock to her mother's side, and seating herself thereon rested her head upon her mother's lap. With one fragile, almost transparent hand, Mrs. Ross brushed back from the sweet, childlike brow the clustering ringlets of dark brown hair that shaded it, and looked eagerly into the sweet face raised loving- ly to her own. Her gaze dwelt fondly yet sadly upon the lovely eyes, dark blue, with their sweet, innocent, holy, mourn- ful expression, the fair, rounded cheeks — a little pale to-night — and the sensitive rosebud lips,

Mrs. Ross still bore traces of an ex- quisite beauty, that not even ill health could quite take away. Her eyes were not unlike her daughter's, and the brown silken hair, although threaded here and there with silver, waved and rippled away from her brow, so white that the veins were plainly visible through the transparent skin. She wore a soft cash- mere wrapper, and a white fleecy shawl was thrown over her shoulders.

" My child," said she at length — and there was a loving cadence in her voice, mournfully low — "My child, I realize more truly to-night than ever before how short is my stay with you. My heart has gone out to the dear old home with its familiar surroundings, with a longing that I cannot repress. All the while you have been singing I have, in fancy, been back within its familiar rooms. The dear old home," she repeated musingly, " you can hardly imagine the grief it caused me to part with it, endeared as it was by so many fond recollections. Nothing but the desire to be near Eu- gene and to have him surrounded by home influences could have reconciled me to the to change. But I fear the sac-

��rifice to have been in vain, for home has lost its charm to him. But I am very weary. Kiss me goodnight, and I will retire. Shall you await up for your brother?"

" Yes, think I will. I will accompany you to your room and see that you are comfortable for the night," replied Mary, leaving the room as she spoke. She soon returned, bearing a night lamp in one hand and a small bowl of steaming broth in the other, which she handed her mother, saying :

" Please drink this, mother. You ate but little at tea time, and this will warm and refresh you."

Ten minutes later Mary sat alone by the fireside. She greatly feared that if Eugene returned at all that night he would return intoxicated, for she knew that he had been drinking when he came home to tea — a very little, to be sure, but her quick eye had detected it as soon as he had entered the room. At every un- usual sound upon the street she would start nervously, the color leaving her cheeks for a moment, her heart beating rapidly. The clock struck eleven, aud then twelve, and still he came not.

How different this from the old life at Maplewood ! There it flowed smoothly along, with hardly a ripple to break its surface ; here it seemed full of treacher- ous waves that threatened at any mo- ment to overwhelm them. Her father ing a handsome competence to his wife and two children. They had remained at the farm until some four years previ- ous to the time of which I write. Eu- gene disliked farm life, and so his mother reluctantly sold the place so dear to her, and at his request purchased the small house where we find them located. A greater portion of their mutual wealth was invested in the firm of Rawson & Co., of which Eugene was a member. One year previous the firm had become bankrupt, and all that was left them was the little home and a few hundred dollars beside. From the date of the failure of Rawson & Co. Eugene changed greatly. He had readily obtained a situation as clerk at a fair salary, but he never seemed the genial, light-hearted young man he
 * had died when she was but a child, leav-

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