"we can pray;" and so all through the autumn, when
the soft, hazy days which Ethie had loved so well kept the lost one
forever in mind, Aunt Barbara waited and hoped, and prayed and watched
for Ethie's coming home, feeling always a sensation of expectancy when
the Western whistle sounded and the Western train went thundering
through the town; and when the hack came up from the depot and did not
stop at her door, she said to herself, "She would walk up, maybe," and
then waiting again she would watch from her window and look far up the
quiet street, where the leaves of crimson and gold were lying upon the
walk. No Ethie was to be seen. Then as the days grew shorter and the
nights fell earlier upon the Chicopee hills, and the bleak winds blew
across the meadow, and the waters of the river looked blue and dark and
cold in the November light, she said: "She will be here sure by
Christmas. She always liked that day best," and her fingers were busy
with the lamb's wool stockings she was knitting for her darling.

"It won't be much," she said to Betty, "but it will show she is not
forgotten;" and so the stocking grew, and was shaped from a half-worn
pair which Ethelyn used to wear, and on which Aunt Barbara's tears
dropped as she thought of the dear little feet, now wandered so far
away, which the stockings used to cover.

Christmas came, and Susie Granger sang of Bethlehem in the old stone
church, and other fingers than Ethie's swept the organ keys, and the
Christmas tree was set up, and the presents were hung upon the boughs,
and the names were called, and Aunt Barbara was there, but the
lamb's-wool stockings were at home in the bureau drawer; there was no
one to wear them, no one to take them from the tree, if they had been
put there; Ethie had not come.

CHAPTER XXVII

AFFAIRS AT OLNEY

Richard could not stay in Camden, where everything reminded him so much
of Ethelyn, and at his mother's earnest solicitations he went back to
Olney, taking with him all the better articles of furniture which Ethie
had herself selected, and which converted the plain farmhouse into quite
a palace, as both Andy and his mother thought. The latter did not object
to them in the least, and was even conscious of a feeling of pride and
satisfaction when her neighbors came in to admire, and some of them to
envy her the handsome surroundings. Mrs. Dr. Van Buren's lesson, though
a very bitter one, was doing Richard good, especially as it was ad