“But listen,” Margeret said, “do you not remember that my father once told you that this rose was finer than any in our garden and you gave him some of the shoots to plant among our own? We have one now, climbing high on our house wall and the others I know are still growing down by the hedge. So to-morrow you shall have a new plant of the very same rose, to grow as tall and bloom as gaily as the last.”
“Bless me now,” cried Goody Parsons, a smile breaking through her tears. “You are your father’s own good daughter, little Mistress, and have almost made me happy again. But I never can be quite so until I can forget the harm my chattering has done or until I see Master Simon come safe home out of that terrible wilderness.”
The new little rose took most kindly to the transplanting that Margeret so skilfully accomplished, and stood strong and sturdy beside the door, its twigs still green long after the leaves had fallen from the trees and the misty Indian summer had taken possession of the land.
“I believe that when Spring comes it will grow as fast as that stocking you are knitting,” laughed Margeret one day, when she came to inspect its progress.
“I hope to see it climb to the top of my door again before I die,” she answered. “Heaven grant me time for that and to end my evil gossiping ways. Do you know that neighbour Allen—” she checked herself suddenly and added, with a sigh, “There I go again! Take heed, my lass, and see how hard it is to mend a fault when you have grown old.” And she closed her lips with firmness and fell to knitting furiously.
Margeret could not forbear laughing again and was still smiling to herself as she took her way across the hill. The leafless woods stood black and bare against a pale yellow sky, and a little thin new moon hung low behind the treetops. She was surprised to find herself so happy to-night, as though in such a fair world there could not be so much of trouble and sadness as she had thought. Just where her path skirted the forest’s edge she caught sight of a dark figure moving among the black shadows of the tree-trunks, and presently she saw it come out of the wood and go down the lane before her.
“Is it Samuel Skerry?” she wondered, as the form, vague in the twilight, turned into the path that led to the shoemaker’s cottage. “But no, it is too tall for the cobbler, it must be that boy who lives with him. What has he been seeking in the wood? The fruits and berries are all gone and he had no gun. I wonder!”