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Elizabeth’s Child
by
“To think that James Sheldon could have a daughter like you!”
Up went Worth’s head. Worth’s grey eyes flashed. “I thought we were not to speak of my parents?” she said. “You ought not to have been the first to break the compact, Uncle Paul.”
“I accept the rebuke and beg your pardon,” he said. He liked her all the better for those little flashes of spirit across her girlish composure.
One day in September they were together in the garden at Greenwood. Worth, looking lovingly and regretfully down the sun-flecked avenue of box, said with a sigh, “Next month I must go home. How sorry I shall be to leave the Grange and Greenwood. I have had such a delightful summer, and I have learned to love all the old nooks and corners as well as if I had lived here all my life.”
“Stay here!” said Uncle Paul abruptly. “Stay here with me. I want you, Worth. Let Greenwood be your home henceforth and adopt your crusty old bachelor uncle for a father.”
“Oh, Uncle Paul,” cried Worth, “I don’t know–I don’t think–oh, you surprise me!”
“I surprise myself, perhaps. But I mean it, Worth. I am a rich, lonely old man and I want to keep this new interest you have brought into my life. Stay with me. I will try to give you a very happy life, my child, and all I have shall be yours.”
Seeing her troubled face, he added, “There, I don’t ask you to decide right here. I suppose you have other claims to adjust. Take time to think it over.”
“Thank you,” said Worth. She went back to the Grange as one in a dream and shut herself up in the white southeast room to think. She knew that she wanted to accept this unexpected offer of Uncle Paul’s. Worth’s loyal tongue had never betrayed, even to the loving aunts, any discontent in the prairie farm life that had always been hers. But it had been a hard life for the girl, narrow and poverty-bounded. She longed to put forth her hand and take this other life which opened so temptingly before her. She knew, too, that her mother, ambitious for her child, would not be likely to interpose any objections. She had only to go to Uncle Paul and all that she longed for would be given her, together with the faithful, protecting fatherly love and care that in all its strength and sweetness had never been hers.
She must decide for herself. Not even of Aunt Charlotte or Aunt Ellen could she ask advice. She knew they would entreat her to accept, and she needed no such incentive to her own wishes. Far on into the night Worth sat at the white-curtained dormer window, looking at the stars over the apple trees, and fighting her battle between inclination and duty. It was a hard and stubbornly contested battle, but with that square chin and those unfaltering grey eyes it could end in only one way. Next day Worth went down to Greenwood.
“Well, what is it to be?” said Uncle Paul without preface, as he met her in the garden.
“I cannot come, Uncle Paul,” said Worth steadily. “I cannot give up my mother.”
“I don’t ask you to give her up,” he said gruffly. “You can write to her and visit her. I don’t want to come between parent and child.”
“That isn’t the point exactly, Uncle Paul. I hope you will not be angry with me for not accepting your offer. I wanted to–you don’t know how much I wanted to–but I cannot. Mother and I are so much to each other, Uncle Paul, more, I am sure, than even most mothers and daughters. You have never let me speak of her, but I must tell you this. Mother has often told me that when I came to her things were going very hard with her and that I was heaven’s own gift to comfort and encourage her. Then, in the ten years that followed, the three other babies that came to her all died before they were two years old. And with each loss Mother said I grew dearer to her. Don’t you see, Uncle Paul, I’m not merely just one child to her but I’m all those children? Six years ago the twins were born, and they are dear, bright little lads, but they are very small yet, so Mother has really nobody but me. I know she would consent to let me stay here, because she would think it best for me, but it wouldn’t be really best for me; it couldn’t be best for a girl to do what wasn’t right. I love you, Uncle Paul, and I love Greenwood, and I want to stay so much, but I cannot. I have thought it all over and I must go back to Mother.”