Nichol felt that if
she had lost a son she had in a measure gained a daughter. As the
months passed and winter was wellnigh spent, the wise gossips of
the village again began to shake their heads and remark, "Helen
Kemble and Bart Martine are very good friends; but I guess that's
all it will amount to--all, at any rate, for a long time."
All, for all time, Helen had honestly thought. It might easily
have been for all time had another lover sought her, or if Martine
himself had become a wooer and so put her on her guard. It was his
patient acceptance of what she had said could not be helped, his
self-forgetfulness, which caused her to remember his need--a need
greatly increased by a sad event. In the breaking up of winter his
mother took a heavy cold which ended in pneumonia and death.
The gossips made many plans for him and indulged in many surmises
as to what he would do; but he merely engaged the services of an
old woman as domestic, and lived on quietly as before. Perhaps he
grew a little morbid after this bereavement and clung more closely
to his lonely hearth.
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