As she said good-bye to
him before she went the round of the village bidding everyone good-bye,
something impelled her to kiss his brown cheek. The last she saw of him
was his bent figure silhouetted in the doorway of the hut with a fire
glow behind it, and the setting sun shining on his eyes that were bright
with tears.
But that night she was too excited to feel really unhappy as she looked
at the boxes ready in the book-room, her little leather case lying open
waiting for the last-minute things next morning. When, even, she
blundered into the dairy to find rope and caught sight of a horrible red
pile of meat that had been Hoodie, she could not cry about it. She was
too busy thinking that, out of her adventuring, a day would come when
the old place would be warmed and lighted again, and she told this to
Aunt Janet, who was sitting, sunk in thought, by the fire in the
book-room.
"I wouldn't be dreaming too much, Marcella," she said gently. "Even if
dreams come true to some extent, they are very disappointing. A dream
that you dreamed in a golden glow comes to pass in a sort of grey
twilight, you know. And you'll never bring happiness here. Get the
thought out of your head. There are too many ghosts. Could you ever kill
the ghost of little Rose lying there with pain inside her, eating her
life out? Or your father raging and hungering, like a pine tree in a
window-pot?" She shook her head sadly.
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