Rescued from her dim and servile city life—brought out into the light and beauty she had mutely longed for—feeling care and kindliness about her for the long-time harshness and oppression she had borne—she was like a spirit newly entered into heaven, that needs no priestly ministration any more. Every breath drew in a life and teaching purer than human words.
And then the words she did hear were Divine. Miss Henderson did no preaching—scarcely any lip teaching, however brief. She broke the bread of life God gave her, as she cut her daily loaf and shared it—letting each soul, God helping, digest it for itself.
Glory got hold of some old theology, too, that she could but fragmentarily understand but that mingled itself—as all we gather does mingle, not uselessly—with her growth. She found old books among Miss Henderson's stores, that she read and mused on. She trembled at the warnings, and reposed in the holy comforts of Doddridge's "Rise and Progress," and Baxter's "Saint's Rest." She traveled to the Holy City, above all, with Bunyan's Pilgrim. And then, Sunday after Sunday, she heard the simple Christian preaching of an old and simple Christian man. Not terrible—but earnest; not mystical—but high; not lax—but liberal; and this fused and tempered all.
So "things had happened" for Glory. So God had cared for this, His child. So, according to His own Will—not any human plan or forcing— she grew.
Aunt Faith washed up the breakfast cups, dusted and "set to rights" in the rooms where, to the young Faith's eyes, there seemed such order already as could not be righted, made up a nice little pudding for dinner, and then, taking down her shawl and silk hood, and putting on her overshoes, announced herself ready for Cross Corners.
"Though it's all cross corners to me, child, sure enough. I suppose it's none of my business, but I can't think what you're up to."
"Not up to any great height, yet, auntie. But I'm growing," said Faith, merrily, and with meaning somewhat beyond the letter.
They went out at the back door, which opened on a little footpath down the sudden green slope behind, and stretched across the field, diagonally, to a bar place and stile at the opposite corner. Here the roads from five different directions met and crossed, which gave the locality its name.
Opposite the stile at which they came out, across the shady lane that wound down from the Old Road whereon Miss Henderson's mansion faced, a gateway in a white paling that ran round and fenced in a grassy door yard, overhung with pendent branches of elms and stouter canopy of chestnuts, let them in upon the little "Cross Corners Farm."
"Oh, Aunt Faith! It's just as lovely as ever! I remember that path up the hill, among the trees, so well! When I was a little bit of a girl, and nurse and I came out to stay with you. I had my 'fairy house' there. I'd like to go over this minute, only that we shan't have time. How shall we get in? Where is the key?"