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Elizabeth’s Child
by
Uncle Paul did not say one word. He turned his back on Worth and walked the full length of the box alley twice. Worth watched him wistfully. Was he very angry? Would he forgive her?
“You are an Ingelow, Worth,” he said when he came back. That was all, but Worth understood that her decision was not to cause any estrangement between them.
A month later Worth’s last day at the Grange came. She was to leave for the West the next morning. They were all out in Grandfather Ingelow’s arcade, Uncle George and Aunt Charlotte and Aunt Ellen and Worth, enjoying the ripe mellow sunshine of the October day, when Paul Ingelow came up the slope. Worth went to meet him with outstretched hands. He took them both in his and looked at her very gravely.
“I have not come to say goodbye, Worth. I will not say it. You are coming back to me.”
Worth shook her brown head sadly. “Oh, I cannot, Uncle Paul. You know–I told you–“
“Yes, I know,” he interrupted. “I have been thinking it all over every day since. You know yourself what the Ingelow determination is. It’s a good thing in a good cause but a bad thing in a bad one. And it is no easy thing to conquer when you’ve let it rule you for years as I have done. But I have conquered it, or you have conquered it for me. Child, here is a letter. It is to your mother–my sister Elizabeth. In it I have asked her to forgive me, and to forget our long estrangement. I have asked her to come back to me with you and her boys. I want you all–all–at Greenwood and I will do the best I can for you all.”
“Oh, Uncle Paul,” cried Worth, her face aglow and quivering with smiles and tears and sunshine.
“Do you think she will forgive me and come?”
“I know she will,” cried Worth. “I know how she has longed for you and home. Oh, I am so happy, Uncle Paul!”
He smiled at her and put his arm over her shoulder. Together they walked up the golden arcade to tell the others. That night Charlotte and Ellen cried with happiness as they talked it over in the twilight.
“How beautiful!” murmured Charlotte softly. “We shall not lose Worth after all. Ellen, I could not have borne it to see that girl go utterly out of our lives again.”
“I always hoped and believed that Elizabeth’s child would somehow bring us all together again,” said Ellen happily.