"I was to tell you, ma'am, that young Mrs. Burnham has gone to lie down and doesn't want to be disturbed. She doesn't want to be awakened even for luncheon; she says she has been on a steady strain for weeks, and has a lot of sleeping to make up; she shouldn't wonder if she slept all day."
"Very well, Ellen, we will keep the house quiet and let her rest as long as she will."
The mother's voice was quietness itself, yet, despite that phrase "young Mrs. Burnham," which, some way, jarred, her heart was filled with compunction. Had the poor young wife, a stranger in a strange home, shut herself up to sleep, or to cry? She had been through nerve-straining experiences so recently; death and marriage coming into one short week; and now, a new home, and Erskine away for the day, and no one within sight or sound whom she had ever seen before. Would it be any wonder if the tears wanted to come? Could not her new mother have helped her through this first strange day? Why had she not put tender arms about her and kissed her, and called her "daughter," and said how glad she was to have a daughter? That was what she had meant to do. This morning when she came from her night vigil, she had almost the words on her lips that she meant to say as soon as they two were alone. She had meant the words in their fulness; so at least she believed. They had come to her in answer to her cry for help. What had kept her from saying them?
Even while she asked herself the question, a faint weary smile hovered about her lips.
Had she done so, would she have been thought "sentimental?"
THE Burnhams were still seated at their dinner table, although Mrs. Erskine Burnham had just remarked that the evening was too lovely to spend in eating.
"Let us take a walk on the porch in the moonlight the minute we are through dinner," she said to her husband. Apparently she paid no heed to the slight dry cough which came so frequently from Erskine that his mother's face took on a shade of anxiety. Erskine's coughs had been his mother's chief anxiety concerning him through the years; he had never been able to tamper with them; but his wife laughed at her fears and frankly told her that Erskine was too old now to be coddled.