"Write to her, Marian--write to-day--now, before I go," Katy continued, clasping Marian's hand, with an expression which, more than aught else won Marian Hazelton's consent to a plan which seemed so strange.
"Yes, I will write," she answered; "I will tell Amelia what you desire."
"But, Marian, you, too, must go. I'll trust baby with you. Say, Marian, will you take care of my darling?"
It was hard to refuse, with those great, wistful, pleading eyes looking so earnestly into hers; but Marian must have time to consider. She had thought of going to New London to open a shop, and if she did she should board with Mrs. Hubbell, and so be with the child. She would decide when the answer came to the letter.
This was all the encouragement she would give; but it was enough to change the whole nature of Katy's feelings, and her face looked bright and cheerful as she tripped down the stairway, talking to Helen of what seemed to both like a direct interposition of Providence, and what she was sure would please Wilford quite as well as the farmhouse up the river.
"Surely he will yield to me in this," she said. Nor was she wrong; for glad of an opportunity to make some concessions, and still in the main have his own way, Wilford raised no objection to the plan as communicated to him by Katy, when, at an earlier hour than usual, he came home to dinner, drawn thither by a remembrance of the face which had haunted him the entire day, and bringing as a peace offering to both wife and sister--a new book for the one, and for the other a set of handsome coral, which he had heard her admire only the week before.
These he presented with that graceful, winning manner he knew so well how to assume, and with the harmony of his household once more restored, felt himself a model husband as he listened to Katy's plan of sending baby to New London. On the whole, it might be better even than the farmhouse up the river, he thought, for it was farther away, and Katy could not be tiring herself with driving out every few days, and keeping herself constantly uneasy and excited. The distance between New York and New London was the best feature of the whole; and he wondered Katy had not thought of it as an objection. But she had not, and but for the pain when she remembered the coming separation, she would have been very happy that evening, listening with Wilford and Helen to the opera of "Norma," and sympathizing so keenly with the poor distracted mother.