The Argosy — page 229: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

214 Fenny Morris s Voyage. would rather have died than heard it. For Mr. West was returning to the golden land again, and would want to take Elsie with him. Even so. That was the bitter drop in the cup, and it made a gloomy shadow fall upon the happy household that not all the wedding preparations and finery could dispel. The day of parting brought pangs those who have not loved and clung to one another for years, as those three simple- minded, warm-hearted women had, can never realize. And the wedding day passed over, and carried away Elsie. It was over now, and had been for months upon months. Mr. and Mrs. West had sailed for San Francisco, and reached it in safety ; but poor Jenny had remained desolate. The open letter now in her hand seemed to renew the sorrow, and bring back again the heart-breaking scene. Elsie was ill, she wrote— too ill to tell of; and she was frightfully nervous at a time of peril that was approaching. And Mr. West added a sealed scrap to the letter, saying that there were fears for his wife, and she was constantly sobbing for Jenny. To read of this distress, and not make an effort to help her, was notin Jenny Morris’s nature ; so after looking at her little aunt’s tearfully sym- pathetic face for a minute or two without speaking, she broke out at last with the sentence above written,— ‘Well, then, there’s nothing left for me but to go to California!” Aunt Morris could only look up in feeble distress, with an expression of helpless grief, and then take shelter in her pocket-handkerchief and silent tears. “Ves,” said Jenny, “I know it’s terrible; but what is to be done? Poor Elsie must not be left alone in her time of need. Suppose—Aunt Morris, you hear what Edward says—suppose she were to die.” ‘With all the haste in the world, you would hardly be in time, Jenny.” | “Oh, yes I should, aunt. And haste I will make. Elsie wrote, she: says, nearly assoon as she knew of it herself. Miss Nevill shall come and stay with you, aunt.” ‘ ‘< Jenny was looked upon by her aunt and sister as possessing gigantic — strength of character and force of will, qualities of which they were both totally destitute. If anything had ever to be decided she decided it at once, with a fiat from which there was no appeal. There was something positively wonderful to them in her determi- nation of manner, and she had gradually come to be considered as full of strange experience of the world, although she had never gone five miles from the place where she was born. ‘Vou know best, dear, of course ; but, is not the voyage to Calter looked upon as a dangerous one?” asked Aunt Morris. ‘Why, it has been made by thousands safely, so I can’t see bow it Gomilcbooks (E(0) mn)