Tabitha at Ivy Hall, page 38 by Ruth Alberta Brown
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minutes; then, hardly knowing why he did so, he rose and entered her room.
She was still lying in a huddled heap, face down upon the mattress, but her head was turned to one side, exposing the flushed, tear-stained cheek and swollen lids where the tears were scarcely dry. One thin arm was still curved beneath her head, but the other had slipped away from her face and lay stretched across the covers, the hand still loosely clutching a damp ball of handkerchief. The pathetic little figure, still quivering convulsively with every breath, touched the heart of the selfish man, and drawing a five-dollar gold piece from his pocket he slipped it inside the moist, brown fist. Then, as if realizing what a paltry thing gold is in comparison with love, he stooped over the flushed face and kissed it gently,--the first kiss he had ever given his little daughter. She stirred, and the coin slipped from her hand, but in his hasty retreat from the room he did not hear it fall to the floor, roll across the light matting and lodge in a crack out of sight. So he stilled the small, inner voice, and going to his room sought his couch almost satisfied with himself.
The next morning when Tabitha awoke he was gone again, back to the mines and their alluring gold, little realizing what a sore heart he had left behind him in the cottage on the desert. At first she could not think what had happened to leave such a heavy weight on her heart that the very atmosphere seemed charged with grief, but as she rubbed the sleep from her eyes, still hot and stinging from her cry, she remembered the whole dreadful story, and in the sympathetic pillow she again buried her face, too humiliated to meet the world, too discouraged to care.
She heard the clock on the mantel strike seven and lay dreading the call to get up. In the kitchen Aunt Maria was busy bustling about the morning work, getting breakfast, washing the dishes and sweeping. Once she heard Tom's voice, but though she strained her ears, she could catch the sound of no answe