" Here the vicar's wife gave
Mary a closer hug, and kissed her once more. "We love you all the
better,--if that was possible," she said.
How many thoughts will fly through a girl's mind while her head rests on
some kind shoulder, and she is being consoled for the first calamity that
has touched her life! She was neither ungrateful nor unresponsive; but
as Mrs. Bowyer pressed her close to her kind breast and cried over her,
Mary did not cry, but thought,--seeing in a moment a succession of
scenes, and realizing in a moment so complete a new world, that all her
pain was quelled by the hurry and rush in her brain as her forces rallied
to sustain her. She withdrew from her kind support after a moment, with
eyes tearless and shining, the color mounting to her face, and not a sign
of discouragement in her, nor yet of sentiment, though she grasped her
kind friend's hands with a pressure which her innocent small fingers
seemed incapable of giving. "One has read of such things--in books," she
said, with a faint courageous smile; "and I suppose they happen,--in
life."
"Oh, my dear, too often in life. Though how people can be so cruel, so
indifferent, so careless of the happiness of those they love--"
Here Mary pressed her friend's hands till they hurt, and cried, "Not
cruel, not indifferent.
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