Chapter X: A Parting

The soft winds of April were blowing over New York, and the spring sunshine made everything as gay and bright as that cheerful city always is in fine weather. The Merricks had “spring fever,” and school was irksome; they yearned to go somewhere, it did not much matter where, and talked longingly of the time when they should go into the country.

The mail was brought in as they were all seated at breakfast, and among the letters was one for Nellie. She read it with flushing cheeks and eyes dancing with joy, which gave place to a very sober look as she folded the letter and glanced around the table.

“Any news from home, Nellie?” asked her aunt, noticing her varying expressions.

“Pa says he would like me to come back,” said Nellie.

“Go back!” cried Inez in horror, while Bob said decidedly: “Well, you can’t do it!” and Hugh added: “Not much you can’t.”

“When does he want you, and why must you go?” asked Mrs. Merrick, while her uncle said: “Nonsense, you can’t go till school closes, and then I had planned taking you to the country with us, and keep you till school begins again.”

“Oh my, I never could stay away like that,” laughed Nellie. “Pa says he won’t set a day for my coming, because he doesn’t know what you may have planned for me to do, but he would like me to go the first of the week. He says a month or so more school can’t matter much, and ma isn’t well. It has been a hard winter for her without me, and she’s tired. He says he doesn’t want to tell her I’m coming, but let it be a surprise to her, and so I’m just to telegraph him when I start, and walk in on her. If ma’s tired and needs me, I’ll really have to go, you see.”

“I believe you want to go,” cried Inez, with tears in her eyes. “I suppose you haven’t thought how Marcy’d feel.”

“I do want to see them all at home just lots,” said Nellie honestly. “When I think about them I get nearly crazy, for, you see, I was never away from home before, and they _are_ so nice. But when I think of leaving you all I feel as though I couldn’t do it, and I do think of Marcy, and I only hope she won’t miss me.”

“You know very well she will, and she needs you more than anybody,” cried Inez.

“She has you----” began Nellie.

“Oh, me,” cried Inez, in new and very becoming humility, “I’m not you, and I never shall be.”

“Now, my dear Inez,” said her mother, “I shall dread Nellie’s going quite as much as you will, not only because I cannot bear the thought of our poor girl up-stairs being lonely, but because I shall miss Nellie myself sorely. But if her mother needs her, and her father has bidden her come, I do not see how we can escape the misfortune. So we will try not to be selfish, only I want Nellie to know that we shall all feel that we have lost our right hand if she goes.”

“Where’s Nellie going?” demanded Lucy, who had held a teaspoonful of oatmeal suspended in mid air, with the milk slowly dripping back into the bowl, while she turned from one speaker to the other in puzzled dismay.

“Nellie’s going home,” said Grace, tears running quietly down each cheek.

“She can’t go. Papa, don’t let her go. You wite to ’em, and say, ‘I’m sowwy, but you can’t never get Nellie; not never, forever, at all,’” cried Lucy.

“Nellie will come back in the fall, Lulie. You must be a good girl, and take care of Marcy till she comes,” said Mr. Merrick. “Well, if it must be, Nellie, what day do you think you will go?”

“This is Saturday. Suppose I go Wednesday?” said Nellie.

“Alone?” cried Mrs. Merrick.

“I came alone,” said Nellie; “I don’t mind. Pa took me to Kansas City and put me in care of the conductor, and he looked after me.”

“Well, I think it’s the meanest thing I ever heard of,” said Bob, with a face crimson from repressing the tears that Hugh could not quite keep back, and which were streaming down Inez’s and Grace’s cheeks.

“Oh, I don’t want to leave you, though I shall be glad to see ma and pa and the children,” cried Nellie, choking. “Please don’t cry, Inez, or you’ll make me. If I can I’ll come East to go to school again next winter. I wish you’d all move to Prairie Rest.”

“What’s the matter with your moving to New York?” asked Bob.

“Oh, there’s so much more to do in Prairie Rest,” said Nellie, nor could she see why the others laughed.

The dismal news was broken to Marcy, who received it in silence, trying to keep Nellie from seeing how hard it was to give up the cheery cousin who made so much of the sunshine of her shadowed life.

“Well,” she said at last, “I’m glad you came, Nellie, for you have been such a comfort, and if you hadn’t we should never have known you. But it will be awful without you, and I’m sure I don’t see how we shall get on at all.”

“I want you to love me, Marcy, and it makes me so happy, I don’t know what to do to have you say I was a comfort to you, but I can’t bear to think you’ll miss me,” cried Nellie.

“I do love you so much,” said Marcy, putting her arms around her, and kissing the bright face till her breath gave out. “You’re so sweet and good, and full of fun, nobody could help loving you, and unless I lost my head as well as my feet, I don’t know anything I couldn’t better spare than you. And it might be a good idea to lose my head, for then maybe I’d go to heaven, after a while in purgatory, and then I could fly about. Sometimes I get into black pits of despair, Nellie.”

“Well, I can tell you one thing: if you went to heaven this house would be a pretty sad place,” said Nellie earnestly. “You may not know it, Marcy, but since you were hurt you’ve just been the hub of the wheel, and they all simply worship you, and think all you say is law and gospel. So if you want to know, I can tell you that you’re the thing on earth they all love best, and not because you are sick, but because you are so patient, and loving, and thoughtful, and sweet. I don’t suppose you remember that when I came you said you wanted to do some big, splendid thing, and I said I’d like to be a saint--just a little home saint. Well, you’re doing what I thought I’d like to do, and I envy you, Marcy Merrick, even if you never got one bit better than you are now.”

Marcy had hidden her face in the pillow and was crying quietly during this outburst, but her tears were tears of joy that her dreams were fulfilling.

At Marcy’s special request Nellie’s trunk was brought into her room to be packed, and many and peculiar were the things that found their way into it during the operation. Gifts for each member of the family in Prairie Rest of course were there, and many little treasures for Nellie were tucked in when she was not looking, to be discovered after she reached home. Mrs. Merrick had grown so fond of the sunny little girl, and was so grateful to her for the comfort she had given Marcy during the first hardest weeks of her trial, that she vied with the children in showing it in parting. Indeed, another trunk had to be purchased on the last day, in which Bob and Hugh deposited their parting gift to Nellie, which they had themselves made with much mystery and no small effort. This was a box, which they had put together and carved, which accounted for the two bandaged fingers on Hugh’s hand and the one on Bob’s. The box bore the initials N. M. on the lid in blue paint with red trimmings, and below that the boys’ own initials. This was intended as a work-box, and though the lid never would quite shut, and the letters were rather wavering, it was much prized by Nellie when she found it on opening her trunk in Prairie Rest.

“Where can my muff be?” cried Nellie, holding the chinchilla collar in her hand and whirling about wildly. “I was sure I laid it on the couch.”

Nellie and Inez shook up the pillows and peered under chairs, but there was no muff to be found. Suddenly Grace cried out:

“Oh, look, Nellie!”

There in the furthest corner, where Kris Kringle had carried it, was her muff, and in it lay the small Yorkshire himself, his forepaws and shiny nose sticking out of it, sleeping the sleep of youth, though not of innocence, for he did more mischief in a day than most dogs could think of in a week. And with her snowy head resting on the side of the muff, and her long plume of a tail gently tapping the floor, while her parted lips wore almost a smile of self-satisfaction, and her forepaws drooped gracefully was Miss Merry, also sound asleep.

“I’ll get it,” cried Inez. “You bad babies, get up this moment.”

But Nellie stayed her hand.

“No, don’t waken them, they’re so cosey and dozy,” she cried. “I’ll pack everything else, and put in the muff after they wake up.”

“Nellie’s a lady, sure pop!” cried Bob, who loved animals with all his boyish heart. “Nobody but a real lady would put herself out to be polite to a puppy and a kitten.”

“I never can thank you all for being so good to me,” said Nellie as they were gathered together for her last evening in New York. One hand was held tight in both of Marcy’s, while the other rested on Bob’s shoulder, and Hugh clasped the thumb. Inez sat behind Nellie, both arms around her neck, and her head on hers, while Lucy sat on her lap, and Grace clasped her knees, crying softly.

“We have not been kind to you, my dear child, because there can be no kindness where one is as dear to us as you are,” said Mr. Merrick heartily. “You’ve been a little sunbeam in the house through a hard winter, and if I had my way, I’d never let you go away, even for a visit, but I’d keep you in spite of your father and the law if I weren’t promised to have you back in October.”

When it was time to go to the train two carriages drew up to the Merricks’ door, for all the family insisted on seeing Nellie off; even Mr. Merrick had promised to be at the station to say good by, and give the conductor special injunctions to look after Nellie’s safety and welfare. Marcy clung to her as if she could never let go, and watched her out of the door with such wistful eyes that Nellie had hardly courage to turn back to wave her hand and meet them.

“Only till October, Marcy,” she cried, as she ran down the stairs. But to poor Marcy five months looked very long. All the servants gathered in the hall to bless Miss Nellie, and wish her good luck, for the little maid had endeared herself to high and low.

Inez, with her hat on ready to go to the station, had an inspiration of unselfishness, and resolved to go back to Marcy.

“Good-by, you dearest, darlingest thing,” she said, hugging Nellie with all her might. “I hope you will forgive me for being nasty to you when you first came, and I’ll be a better girl when you come back.”

At the station they found Madeleine Greene with flowers and candy, and Mr. Merrick said warningly:

“Now don’t eat all the candy you have, Nellie, or I don’t know what may happen. I wish I had brought you a bottle of medicine instead.”

For Bob, Inez, and Hugh had given her candy, and Mr. Merrick had himself brought down a five-pound box.

The bell rang, and her friends left Nellie in her compartment, and drew up in line along the platform below her window. The engine puffed, the couplings tightened with a little jar, and the train began to move slowly out of the station.

The last the Merricks saw was a tearful round face pressed close to the window-pane, surmounted by a hat very much awry, and with straining eyes striving to get the last glimpse of them.

“Well,” said Bob hoarsely, as they went through the station to the carriages, “she’s the nicest girl in the world, except Marcy. But who would have thought when she came that we should feel as if the bottom had fallen out of the world because we had lost the Prairie Chicken?”