LITERATURE.

Globe, Volume XXII, Issue 1999, 21 July 1880, Page 3

LITERATURE.

TAKING BOARDERS. Concluded .) * What makes you keep us, my dear ?’ asked Mrs Clement, after a day when everything and everybody had seemed to go wrong. ‘Why didn’t you ever marry? You had a lover, 1 dare say ?’ ‘ Yes ; a long time ago.’ * Tell me about him —it ?’ ‘ There isn’t much to tell. He asked m# to marry him. He was going to Australia. I couldn’t leave mother and father, yon know (they were both feeble), and he couldn’t stay hero. That was all.’ ‘ And you —you —’ ‘Now all men besides are to me like shadows,’ ‘And yon have never heard of him since!’ ‘ Yes. He wrote; but where was the use ? It could never come to anything. It was better for him to forget mo, and marry. I was a mill stone about his neck. I didn’t answer his last letter.’ * And, supposing he should return some day, would you marry him ?’ ‘ I dare say,’ laughed Delia, gently, as if the idea were familiar, ‘ let the neighbors laugh ever so wisely. I’ve thought of it, sometimes, sitting alone, when the world was barren and commonplace. One must have recreation of some kind, you know. Everybody requires a little romance, a little poetry, to flavor every day thinking and doing. I’m afraid you’ll think me a silly old maid, Mrs Clement.’ ‘No, The heart never grows old. The akin shrivels, the color departs, the eyes fade, the features grow pinched ; bat the soul is heir of eternal youth—is as beautiful at four score as at “sweet and twenty.” Time makes amends for the ravages of the body by developing the spirit ■ You didn’t tell me your lover’s name. Perhaps you’d rather not.’ ‘ His name was Stephen Langdon, Sometimes Captain Seymour runs against him in Melbourne, and brings me word how he looks and what he la doing, though I never, never ask, and Stephen never asks for me, that I can hear.’ Delia’s summer boarders were not a success, to be sure. If they took no money out of her pocket, they put none in. She was obliged to eke out her support with copying for Lawyer Dunmore and embroidering for Mrs Judge Dorr. One by one her boarders dropped away like the autumn leaves, all but old Mrs Clement. ‘ I believe I’ll stay on,’ she said. ‘ I’m getting too old to move often. Perhaps you take winter boarders at reduced rates. Eh?’ ‘ Do you think my terms high V *By no means. But when one’s purse is low— ’ ‘ Yes, I know. Do stay at your own price. I can’t spare you.’ She had grown such a fondness for the old lady that to refuse her at her own terms would have seemed like turning her own mother out of doors—besides, one month the more would not signify. But she found it hard to make both ends meet, and often went hungry to bed that her mother and Mrs Clement might enjoy enough, without there appearing to be'* just a pattern.’ At Christmas, however, came a ray of nunshine for Delia, in the shape of a hnndroddollar bill from an unknown friend. ‘lt can’t bo for me,’ she cried. ‘ It’s directed to Delia Eogerson,’ said her mother, ‘ and there’s nobody else of that name, now your Aunt Delia’s dead.’ ‘ We’re not sure she’s dead,’ objected Delie. ‘ Horrors ! Don’t you know whether your own aunt is dead or alive ?’ asked Mrs Clement, in a shocked tone. ‘lt isn’t our fault. Sho is rich and lives abroad. I was named after her. I used to look in the glass and try to believe I’d inherited her beauty with the name, though she was only our great-uncle’s wife.' ‘She ought to bo doing something for i you.' , i ‘How can she be if she’s dead? I don t i blame her, anyway. Her money is her own to use according to her pleasure. Uncle John made it himself and gave it to her,’

‘ Bat if she should come back to you, having run through it, you’d divide your last crust with her. I’ll be bound.’ ‘ I suppose I should,’ said Delia. The winter wore away, as winter wid, and the miracles of spring began in fields and wayside; and JJelia’s boarders returned with the June roses, and dropped again away with the falling leaves, and still Mrs Clement staid on and on.

No money had been forthcoming for some time, and she was growing more feeble daily, needed the luxuries of nn invalid and the attentions of a nurse, both of which Delia bestowed upon her, without thought for the morrow.

* I must hear from my man of business tomorrow, Delia. I’m knee-deep in debt to you,’ she began, one night ‘ Don’t mention it ’ cried Delia, ‘ I'd rather never see a cent of it than have you take it to teart. You’re welcome to stay and share pot luck with us; you’re such company for mother and me.’

‘ Thank ycu, my dear. I’ve grown as fond of you as if you were my own flesh and blood. There, turn down the light, please. Draw the curtain, dear, and put another stick on the fire, please. It grows chilly, doesn’t it ? Vou might kiss me, just once, If you wouldn’t mind. It’s a hundred years or so since any one kissed me,' And the next morning, when Delia carried np Mrs Clement a breakfast, her boarder lay cold and still upon the pillows. The first shock over, Delia wrote directly to the lawyer of whom she had heard Mrs Clement speak as having charge of her affairs, begging him to notify that lady’s relatives, if she had any. In reply, Mr Wills wrote :

“ The late Mrs Clement appears te have no near relatives. Some distant cousins, who, having abundance of this world's goods, yet served her shabbily when she tested their generosity, as she has tried yours, are all that remain of her family. In the meantime, I enclose yon a copy of her last will and testament, to peruse at your leisure.” ‘ What interest does he think I take in Mrs Clement’s will,’ thought Della; but read nevertheless :

“ Being of sound mind, this sixteenth day of June, 18 —, I, Delia Rogersou Clement, do hereby leave one hundred dollars to each of my cousins ; and I bequeath the residue of my property, viz—thirty thousand dollars invested in the Ingot Mining Company, fifty thousand in the United States bonds, twenty thousand in Fortune F.annel Mills, and my jewels, to the beloved niece of my first husband, John Rogerson. “Delia. Rcgersok, “Of Oroftsborough, M&iue.” “For I was a stranger, and yo took me in ; hungry, and ye fed me ; sick, and y© ministered unto me.’

‘Goodness alive!’ cried the neighbors, when the facts raached their ears, ‘ What a profitable thing it is to tako boarders! Everybody in town will bo trying it. Of course, Steve Langdon will coma heme and marry her, if she were forty old maids. You may stick a pin in there !’ Della did not open her house to boarders the next season. She found enough to do in looking after her money and spending it ; in replying to letters from indigent people, who seemed to increase alarmingly ; in receiving old friends, who suddenly found time to remember her existence. And, sure enough, among the rest appeared Steve Langdon, and all the village said, ‘I told yon so.’ * It’s not my fanlt that yon and I are single yet, Delia,’ he said. ‘And we are too old to think of a change now, Steve.’ ‘ Nonsense ! It’s never too late to mend. I’m not rich, Delia; but I’ve enough for two and to spare.’ ‘ I wouldn’t be contented not to drive in my carriage and have servants under me now, 1 laughed Delia. * Indeed ? Then perhaps you have a better match in view. Captain Seymour asked me, by the way, if I had come to Interfere with Squire Jones’ interest.’ ‘Yes? gqnire Jones proposed to me last week.’

‘Now, see here, Delia. Pave I come all the way from Melbourne on a fool’s errand 1 There I was, growing used to my misery and loneliness, when the mail brings me a letter in a strange hand, which tells me that my dear love, Delia Kogerson, loves and dreams of me still, is poor and alone, and needs me —me ! And the letter is signed by her aunt, Mrs Clement, who ought to know. I packed my household goods and came —’ * I’m glad you did.’ *ln order that I may congratulate Squire Jones.’

‘But I haven’t accepted him. In fact I’ve refused him —because —’

‘ Because you will marry your old love, like the lass in the song, Delia 1’ In Croftsborongh people are not yet tired of telling how a woman made money by taking boarders.