Three weeks afterward, she went in as housemaid for the children's ward to the Hospital; the beautiful charity which stands, a token of the real best growth of Boston, in that new quarter of her fast enlarging borders, where the tide of her wealth and her life is reaching out southward, toward the pure country pleasantness.
We must leave her there, now; at rest from her ambitions; reaching into a peace they could never have given her; doing daily work that comes to her as a sign and pledge of acceptance and forgiveness.
She sat by a child's bed one Sunday; the bed of a little girl ten years old, whom she had singled out to do by for Susie's sake. She had taken the place of a nurse, to-day, who was ill with an ague.
She read to Maggie the Bible story of Joseph, out of a little book for children that had been Sue's.
After the child had fallen asleep, Marion fetched her Bible, to look back after something in the Scripture words.
It had come home to her,—that betrayal and desertion of the boy by his brethren; it stood with her now for a type of her own selfish unfaithfulness; it thrust a rebuke and a pain upon her, though she knew she had repented.
She wanted to see exactly how it was, when, in the Land beyond the Desert, his brethren came face to face again with Joseph.
"Now, therefore, be not grieved, nor angry with yourselves, that ye sold me hither; for God did send me before you to preserve life.... To save your lives with a great deliverance. So it was not you that sent me hither, but God.... And thou shalt dwell in the land of Goshen, and thou shalt be near unto me."
A great throb of thankfulness, of gladness, came rushing up in her; it filled her eyes with light; it flushed her cheeks with tender color. The tears sprung shining; but they did not fall. Peace stayed them. It was such an answer!
"How pretty you are!" said Maggie, awakening. "Please, give me a drink of water."