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By the time the meal was finished Huldah's mind was made up. She must talk to Miss Rose about things. The matter seemed so puzzling, so complicated, she could not sort out the right and the wrong of it at all. It was all beyond her. Aunt Martha fell in with the plan at once. "Mrs. Smith can stay here with me till you come back," she said, hospitably; and the visitor agreed eagerly.
Jo and his partisans got equally angry, and it was a wise suggestion of Huldah's that quieted them. "Feyther," said she, "ah'll sleep i' the kitchen the night. If Wully 'as ae way of gettin' oot ah'll see it, an' if he's no oot an' sheep's killed on the country-side, we'll ha' proof it's na Wully." That night Huldah stretched herself on the settee and Wully slept as usual underneath the table.
Dick had recognised Charlie that was the meaning of his excitement, and therein lay the greatest danger, for he was barking and leaping about the old horse in such delight that everyone's attention was attracted, and it was only a question as to how soon he would attract Uncle Tom's attention too. Huldah's own heart yearned to go over and speak to the dear old horse, but her fears were stronger.
And the Princess Yolande alighted and kissed Mother Huldah's hands and promised to visit her often. So with many true words they parted at last, and Mother Huldah was left alone with Tommie and the bags of gold and silver, which she took indoors and then returned to scan the sky where now the white stars hung and a thin half-circle of a moon.
But Huldah's promise seems contradicted by the circumstances of his death. But the promise is fulfilled in its real meaning by the fact that the threatenings which he was inquiring about did not fall on Judah in his time, and so far as these were concerned, he did come to his grave in peace.
Glad that this poor soul was coming to her Father, but at the same time sad, for she knew how little hope there was of Huldah's wish coming to pass. It was sweet, though, to the dying woman to hear the wish from the child she had ill-treated and neglected so long, and she clasped her to her in a paroxysm of love.
Huldah's school-girl romances, with their wealth of commonplace detail, were not the stuff her dreams were made of, when dreams did flutter across the sensitive plate of her mind. Among the teachers at Wareham was one who influenced Rebecca profoundly, Miss Emily Maxwell, with whom she studied English literature and composition.
"I was once," I confessed, "but I think under Polydore régime I am getting stoical enough to follow in Huldah's footsteps and go her one better." Our conversation was interrupted by the entrance of Diogenes. Silvia screamed. Turning to see what the latest Polydore perpetration might be, I saw that Diogenes was frothing at the mouth. "Oh, he's having a fit!" exclaimed Silvia frantically.
Just call to mind the face of that sugar gingerbread lady and you will have an exact portrait of Huldah's mother, Mis' Peter Meserve, she was generally called, there being several others. "How'd you like Huldy's dress, Delia?" she asked, snapping the elastic in her black jet bracelets after an irritating fashion she had.
Sometimes he had written from Boston and asked her the news of Riverboro, and she had sent him pages of quaint and childlike gossip, interspersed, on two occasions, with poetry, which he read and reread with infinite relish. If Huldah's stranger should be Mr. Aladdin, would he come to see her, and could she and Emma Jane show him their beautiful room with so many of his gifts in evidence?
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