No, she could not kiss a
veil, and so she only held and pressed Ethelyn's hand, and leading her
into the house, told her she was very welcome, and bade her come to the
fire and take off her things, and asked if she was not tired, and cold
and hungry.
And Ethelyn tried to answer, but the great lumps were swelling in her
throat, and so keen a pain was tugging at her heart that when at last,
astonished at her silence, Richard said, "What is the matter, Ethie--why
don't you answer mother?" she burst out in a pitiful cry:
"Oh, Richard, I can't, I can't; please take me back to Aunt Barbara."
This was the crisis, the concentration of all she had been suffering for
the last hour, and it touched Mrs. Markham's heart, for she remembered
just how wretched she had been when she first landed at the rude log
cabin which was so long her Western home, and turning to Richard, she
said, in an aside:
"She is homesick, poor child, as it's natural she should be at first.
She'll be better by and by, so don't think strange of it. She seems
very young."
In referring to her youth, Mrs. Markham meant nothing derogatory to her
daughter-in-law, though Ethelyn did strike her as very young, in her
pretty hat with her heavy hair low in her neck.
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