Page 6 of Threads that Remain

She stood there a long time. Presently she felt the Colonel come and stand behind her and did not turn.

“I do not know if I shall be good at it,” said she, softly.

“I know,” said her husband.

“You know I shall not be good at it?”

“I know that you do not know,” said he. “I have always thought that a particularly good sign. It is said one should not assign a dangerous task that must be done at great heights, to a man unafraid of heights. They tend to be careless instead of cautious.”

Marianne’s heart filled with love as she looked at her husband. His steady insights had a way of making her worries calmly settle. She laid her head against his chest as they wrapped their arms around each other, and they stayed this way for a long minute before they went back along the passage together, with the candle throwing its small unsteady light along the wall.

Chapter V.

The next two years at Delaford need not be set down in detail; for it is the general law of nurseries that a child learns first to walk, then to run, then to climb, and then to fall, in that order and at intervals sufficiently short to keep every adult in the house in a state of permanent and cheerful alarm. Henry observed the law with great exactness. It was not long after his arrival that he had ascended the library ladder; by four, the linden tree by the east door, from which he was extracted by the Colonel, with a leaf in his hair and the air of a man who had been about important business and resented the interruption. By the end of that time there was scarcely a room at Delaford that did not contain a wooden horse.

Marianne, who had feared she might be a failure at motherhood, discovered that she had a talent for it that surprised only herself. She sang to Henry, and played to him, and read to him, and ran with him across the lawn until both were out of breath; and if there were mornings when he turned his head a certain way against the window and she had to stop, and stand still, and breathe, those mornings grew fewer, and she told nobody of them except Elinor, who never seemed to need telling.

Meanwhile, at the parsonage, Elinor had also become a mother; a daughter was born, a small creature named Mary. The following spring, Delaford welcomed a daughter as well.

Henry was five years old when he met his baby sister, Anne.

He stood beside his Mamma’s bed, looking down at the tiny bundle sleeping peacefully in her arms.

For a long moment, he just stared.

“She’s so little,” he whispered.

Mamma smiled. “She is.”

Henry leaned closer, careful not to touch her. Anne’s eyes were tightly closed beneath her tiny lashes.

“When will her eyes open?” he asked.

“When she wakes up,” Mamma said softly.

Henry looked surprised.

“When she wakes up?”

Mamma nodded.

He thought about that for a moment, then his face brightened with sudden understanding.

“Oh!” said he. “So we don’t have to wait like we did with the kittens?”

Mamma laughed quietly. “No, sweetheart. She will open them when she wakes up.”

Henry looked at his sleeping sister again.

Slowly, he reached out and touched her tiny hand with one finger.

Anne’s little fingers curled around his.

Henry’s eyes widened.

He looked up at Mamma, a smile spreading across his face.

“She likes me,” he whispered.