Pray God you never may be so tried, fair reader! If, in
these days, she had not had the children to keep and comfort, she has
since told me, she could scarce have borne it. To calm their fears, to
soothe their little sorrows, to look anxiously--more anxiously than
ever before--after each one of her precious little brood, became now
her chief solace.
Thus the long, weary days rolled away, each setting sun crushing
another hope, until at last the autumn storms approached, the last
Banker was safe home; and by this time it was plain, even to poor Hepsy
Ann's faithful heart, that her dead would not come back to her.
"If only Elkanah were here!" she had sometimes sighed to herself;--but
in all these days she wrote him no word. And he--guessing nothing of
her long, silent agony, himself sufficiently bemired in his slough of
despond, working away with sad, unsatisfied heart in his little studio,
hoping yet for light to come to his night--was, in truth, so full of
himself, that Hepsy Ann had little of his thoughts. Shall I go farther,
and admit that sometimes this poor fellow dimly regretted his pledged
heart, and faintly murmured, "If only I were free, _then_ I might do
something"? If only the ship were rid of her helmsman, then indeed
would she go--somewhere.
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