His
hand,--and bear with all your might!"

XIX.

INSIDE.

"Do you think, Luclarion," said Desire, feebly, as Luclarion came to
take away her bowl of chicken broth,--"that it is my _duty_ to go
with mamma?"

"I don't know," said Luclarion, standing with the little waiter in
her right hand, her elbow poised upon her hip,--"I've thought of
that, and I _don't_ know. There's most generally a stump, you see,
one way or another, and that settles it, but here there's one both
ways. I've kinder lost my road: come to two blazes, and can't tell
which. Only, it ain't my road, after all. It lays between the Lord
and you, and I suppose He means it shall. Don't you worry; there'll
be some sort of a sign, inside or out. That's His business, you've
just got to keep still, and get well."

Desire had asked her mother, before this, if she would care very
much,--no, she did not mean that,--if she would be disappointed, or
disapprove, that she should stay behind.

"Stay behind? Not go to Europe? Why, where _could_ you stay? What
would you do?"

"There would be things to do, and places to stay," Desire had
answered, constrainedly. "I could do like Dorris."

"Teach music!"

"No. I don't know music. But I might teach something I do know. Or I
could--rip," she said, with an odd smile, remembering something she
had said one day so long ago; the day the news came up to Z----
from Uncle Oldways. "And I might make out to put together for other
people, and for a real business. I never cared to do it just for
myself."

"It is perfectly absurd," said Mrs Ledwith. "You couldn't be left to
take care of yourself. And if you could, how it would look! No; of
course you must go with us."

"But do you _care_?"

"Why, if there were any proper way, and if you really hate so to
go,--but there isn't," said Mrs. Ledwith, not very grammatically or
connectedly.

"She _doesn't_ care," said Desire to herself, after her mother had
left her, turning her face to the pillow, upon which two tears ran
slowly down. "And that is my fault, too, I suppose. I have never
been _anything_!"

Lying there, she made up her mind to one thing. She would get Uncle
Titus to come, and she would talk to him.

"He won't encourage me in any notions," she said to herself. "And I
mean now, if I can find it out, to do the thing God means; and then
I suppose,--I _believe_,--the snarl will begin to unwind."

Meanwhile, Luclarion, when she had set a nice little bow