The Old Photograph
"Oh," she said. "So you came in the back way. I didn't hear you come in. Reckon I must have been asleep."
Rosemary did not answer. She longed to be alone in her own room with the inlaid box, which now assumed a mystery and portent it had never had before, but it was almost midnight before, by the flickering light of a candle-end, she broke it open, smothering the slight sound with the patchwork quilt.
She hoped for stationery, but there was none. It contained an old photograph and a letter addressed to Grandmother Starr. Rosemary leaned to the light with the photograph, studying it eagerly. It was old and faded, but the two were still distinct--a young woman in an elaborate wedding gown, standing beside a man who was sitting upon an obviously uncomfortable chair.
The man, in a way, resembled Grandmother Starr; the lady looked like Rosemary, except that she was beautiful. "Father!" cried Rosemary, in an agonising whisper. "Mother!" Face to face at last with those of her own blood, dead though they were!
The little mother was not more than two or three and twenty: the big strong father was about twenty-five. She had never been shown the picture, nor had even guessed its existence. Since she was old enough to think about it all, she had wondered what her father and mother looked like.
Her Father's Letter
Thrilled with a new, mysterious sense of kinship, she dwelt lovingly upon every line of the pictured faces, holding the photograph safely beyond the reach of the swift-falling tears. She was no longer fatherless, motherless; alone. Out of the dust of the past, like some strangely beautiful resurrection, these two had come to her, richly dowered with personality.
It was late when she put down the picture and took up the letter, which was addressed to Grandmother Starr. She took it out of the envelope, unfolded the crackling, yellowed pages, and read: "Dear Mother; "Since writing to you yesterday that I was going up north on the Clytie, I have been thinking about the baby, and that it might be wise to provide for her as best I can in case anything should happen to me. So I enclose a draft for eleven thousand five hundred dollars made payable to you. I have realised on my property here, but this is all I have aside from my passage-money and a little more, and, if I land safely, I shall probably ask you to return at least a large part of it.
"But, if the ship should go down, as I sincerely hope it won't, she will be sure of this, for her clothing and education. In case anything should happen to her, of course I would want you and Matilda to have the money, but if it doesn't, give Rosemary everything she needs or wants while the money lasts, and oh, mother, be good to my little girl!