Hurry! Father will be angry if he has to wait."
Then she grew quiet; only her restless hands, which her daughters
vainly strove to hold, kept reaching out as if to grasp that unknown
land she was so soon to enter; and before the sun was high in the
morning Mrs. Stillman had found rest.
Her husband was stunned. With haggard face he bent over his dead.
"If I had known," he said. "Oh, my wife, if I had known, I would have
taken better care of you."
Ah, Mr. Stillman, you are not the only one who with remorseful heart
cries, "If I had only known, if I had only known!"
Life went on as usual at Stillman's after the mother had left them.
For a while the father was kinder, but as time went on the old habit
was resumed. Elizabeth went mechanically about her work, and her
father did not notice her evidently failing health. Her quietness was
a relief to him; for Margaret was growing more defiant toward him, and
quarrelled constantly with Tom, who, now that his mother's influence
was withdrawn, became more and more meddlesome and overbearing in his
conduct toward his sisters. The summer following Mrs. Stillman's death
Mrs. Lansing's eldest son, Frank, took unto himself a wife; and
late in the fall the neighborhood was electrified by the unexpected
marriage of Mrs. Lansing and Mr.
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