“My mother was an invalid for many years,” Miss Rindy went on. “She
doted on Albert from the time he was a baby, for he was a very pretty
child, and I wasn’t. He was gentle and good-natured, which I was not.
Poor Mother adored beauty. She was romantic and sentimental. Her eldest
child, my sister Cora, was a beauty and Mother was very proud of her,
but she died when she was sixteen, and then plain little Rindy was the
one that was left. I don’t think my mother ever got over the fact that
the beauty was taken and the plain one left, so she poured out all her
affection and pride upon Albert, spoiled him utterly.”
She paused, but Ellen saw a look upon her face which made her go over to
her cousin and put her arms around her. “You dear, you dear,” she
murmured. “You are perfectly beautiful to me, and I know you were to all
those boys overseas that you did so much for.”
Miss Rindy turned her head away. “Don’t,” she said; but Ellen saw that
there were tears in her eyes when again she took up her work.
This conversation not only made Ellen more appreciative of what her
cousin was doing for her, but it made her eager to have more light
thrown upon her history, and who could tell her better than Jeremy Todd,
who had known Rindy Crump all his life. So to Jeremy did Ellen go for
information.
It was one afternoon when the light was streaming in through the
stained-glass windows of the little church. The organ lesson was over,
and Jeremy had finished playing one of Ellen’s favorite sonatas. He
never failed to do this after the lesson; then they would talk for a
while and walk home together.
Ellen waited till the last chords died away before she said: “You knew
Cousin Rindy’s brother, didn’t you, Mr. Todd? What sort of person was
he?”
“Know Al Crump? Oh, yes, of course I knew him; a mighty agreeable person
he was, everybody liked him, but he had no sort of stability about him,
visionary, into any sort of scheme that came up, good looking and good
tempered, but selfish.”
“I never knew till the other day that Cousin Rindy had a brother; she
never mentions him.”
“That is not surprising, considering that she has not heard from him for
years.”
“But she knows where he is; she told me he lived in Seattle.”
“So he does, but she doesn’t know it from him. Some of his old friends
keep her informed. He is doing pretty well, I believe, has found his
niche at last, and, having been thrown on his own resources, has worked
out a better career than he could have done here. Probably it took a
long time for his judgment to mature; it is that way sometimes.”
“Did they quarrel?”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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