HER NEW HOME
At last Mr. Gray’s affairs were all cleared up, and Sarah was about to
leave dingy old Bridgehampton behind for ever to take up her new life in
London, the great city of the world.
There were some very sad farewells to be made still; and Mrs. Stubbs was
a woman of very good feeling, and encouraged the child to go and say
good-bye to everybody who had been kind to her in the past.
"There is Mrs. Tracy," said Sarah on the last day. "She brought me all
that fruit and jam and the other things, Auntie."
"Oh, you must go and say good-bye to ’er, of course," returned Mrs.
Stubbs; "and we must go and see your pore pa’s grave, for ’eaven knows
when you’ll see it again."
"I should like to do that, please," said Sarah in a very low voice.
"Well, _I_ can’t drag out all that way," remarked Mrs. Stubbs, who,
being stout, was not good at walking exercise. "We’ll have an open
carriage if nurse can get one; and nurse shall go too."
So Sarah went and said "good-bye" to her father’s grave; and the wise
old nurse, after a minute spent beside it, drew Mrs. Stubbs away to the
other side of the pretty churchyard to show her a curious tombstone
about which she had been telling her as they drove along. So Sarah, for
a few minutes, was left alone--free to kneel down and bid her farewell
in peace.
It was a relief to the child to be alone, for Mrs. Stubbs, though
meaning to be kindness itself, was not a woman in whose presence it was
possible to grieve in comfort. Her remarks about "your pore pa"
invariably had the effect of stifling any feeling of emotion which was
aroused in her childish heart.
She was very good. Sarah knew that she meant to be so.
"I’ll try not to mind the difference, dear Father," she whispered to the
brown sods above his dear head. "It’s all so different to you, so
different to when there was just you and I together. Nobody will ever
understand me like you, dear Daddy; but Auntie means to be very kind,
and I’ll try my hardest to grow up so that you’ll love me better when we
meet again."
As she rose up, Mrs. Stubbs and the nurse were coming across the grass
between the graves to fetch her. Mrs. Stubbs noticed the tears on her
cheeks and still flooding her eyes.
"Nay, now, you mustn’t fret, Sarah," she said kindly; "’e’s better off,
pore thing, than when he was ’ere, so you mustn’t fret for ’im, there’s
a good girl."
Sarah wiped her eyes, and turned to go away. She said nothing, for she
knew it was no use trying to make her aunt understand that her tears had
not been so much for him as for herself. And Mrs. Stubbs stood for a
moment looking down upon the mould, with its covering of brown,
disjointed sods and its faded wreaths.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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