HEARTS OF GOLD

19. AN OLD NEW FRIEND.

181 AN OLD NEW FRIEND. Chapter XIX. It was with premonitions of dreaded contact with Dr. Leighton that Regenia left her home for the school room the morning after the meeting described in the previous chapter. Around every corner, as she hastened to and from school she expected to come face to face with him. During the morning and until the last tardy pupil had come trooping in, her nerves received a new shock at each opening of the door. Her fears were unnecessary . Dr. Leighton did not annoy her with his presence for many days. He had wisely surmised that his sudden meeting with his cousin had served to increase rather than to lessen her fear of him. The dictation of a wise policy, therefore, kept him out of sight until the old dislike consequent upon his unexpected appearance, was somewhat allayed. On one Saturday afternoon, allowing a few weeks to elapse, the doctor called at Regenia’s boarding house. He found her in the parlor, idly running over some music she had recently purchased. Regenia drew back as if to leave the room when he entered. “You need not run, my dear cousin, I do not intend to eat you up doday . You are not in prime condition,” he said with a laugh, referring to her attenuated appearance. “The life of a school marm does not seem to agree with you,” he continued , interrogatively. Reginia, addressed in such a frank way, could not consistently withdraw . “I have never been an Amazon,” she said, laughing at the picture her words called up. “I have been flattering myself that I have grown stouter 182 j. mchenry jones since I saw you last,” a shade of sorrow instantly flitting across her face, at the remembrance of their last meeting at Mt. Clare. Dr. Leighton immediately changed the trend of the conversation; it was verging toward a subject he feign would have blotted from the tablets of his mind. “And do you really like your work?” he said, betraying an interest in her occupation he did not feel. “Better than anything I ever did in my life,” she enthusiastically replied . “I can easily believe that,” he said, laughing in his old way. “In what work or business did you engage previous to you entering upon the present fascinating pastime?” “You understand what I mean,” she said, laughing also. “I am truly fond of my work and love the children dearly. In fact, I never seemed to have lived or had any right to do so before. Now it is so different. I seem to be living with a purpose: living for one’s self is not half so noble as living and laboring for others.” “A very excellent sentiment and wonderfully becoming to you my philanthropic little cousin, and one that would make the world happier, did everybody act upon it. The charity of the most of us, I fear, too often begins and ends in the same place—at home,” he added. “It would not begin and end there, I am sure,” she said, “were it not that most people lack opportunity to have brought to their doors, through actual experience, the old heaven-sent truth, ‘It is more blessed to give than to receive.’“ Regenia, like most young people that have not been tainted by temptation and soiled by sin, refused to believe the world as sordid and self-centered as it is often portrayed. “And yet, with all your faith in the ultimate good, that dwells native in the human heart, you pack up and run away from the only person whose right to look after you would pass unchallenged in any court in the world. How do you reconcile your faith with your actions?” he asked in an injured tone. “Oh, I do not try to reconcile anything. I only know I could not have remained in Mt. Clare another day if I had been sure death awaited me only a few miles from the place. I was so bereaved, so thoroughly miser- 183 hearts of gold able with my double sorrow that death anywhere in the wide round world would have been preferable to life at the ‘Elms.’” “I can understand,” he said kindly, “how you must have felt, but do you think I was happy? Two mysterious disappearances in so short a time unstrung me also. If you had only indicated that you wanted...