It was the night for the weekly vestry lecture. I was left quite
alone in the old kitchen. My uncle had extinguished the lamp in
leaving, saying that it was “a waste to burn out oil for me.” The
fire, also, had been carefully taken apart, and the brands laid at
an incombustible distance from each other. The old clock kept up
a sepulchral, death-watch tick, and I could hear the falling snow
drifting gloomily against the windows.
I drew the old, wooden settle closer between the tall andirons, and
sat sorrowfully gazing into the dying embers. What was to become of
me? for it seemed impossible to bear longer the intolerable galling
of my yoke. Even the charity of strangers seemed to me preferable to
the grudging, insulting tolerance of my kindred. But, with my sixteen
years’ experience of quiet valley-life, where should I turn my untried
footsteps? To Him who guideth the little bird through the pathless air,
would I look.
Weeping, I prayed.
“My poor child,” said a voice at my side; and Master Grey removed
my hands gently from my tear-stained face, and held them in his own.
“My poor Hetty, life looks very dark to you, does it not? I know all
you suffer. Don’t pain yourself to tell me about it; I overheard your
uncle’s crushing words. I know there are none to love you--none to
care for you--none on whom you can lean. It is a bitter feeling, my
poor child. I, too, have passed through it. You would go from hence,
but where? Life is full of snares, and you are too young, and too
inexperienced to brave them.
“Hetty,” and Master Grey drew me gently toward him,--“Hetty, could
you be happy with me?”
Is the ship-wrecked mariner happy, who opens his despairing eyes at
length in the long looked for, long prayed for, home?
Is the little bird happy, who folds her weary wings safe from the
pursuer’s talons, in her own fleece-lined nest?
Is the little child happy, who wakes, sobbing, in the gloomy night,
from troubled dreams, to find his golden head still safely pillowed on
the dear, maternal bosom?