Conjuring was, however, in this matter no longer needed, for a very real trouble lay already to hand.
The change in Mr. Wilmot had become patent to all who knew him. A laboured and languid gait replaced the old brisk walk; a fixed perpetual pallor replaced the old healthy sunburn. If he had to ascend a little slope, he stood still often to pant for breath. The exertion of preaching would bring visible drops of moisture to his brow; and not seldom the once clear and ringing tones were inaudible to half his congregation.
Yet with this appearance of weakness, there existed an unusual brightness, and this it was chiefly which helped to blind Annie's eyes.
For a while, in the earlier part of the summer, she and many others had thought him unwontedly grave and depressed. The gravity and depression were gone now, utterly. Never had his eyes shone with so calm a light, never had his smile been so full of sunshine. There were some who noted in his look and bearing a strange unearthliness—noted it with mingled awe and fear. Yet they could not have told wherein it consisted; for even while they noted it, and thought him worn and altered, his laugh would break out in all its old gaiety, as he paused to speak to some little child. And how the children loved him!
Annie's eyes remained long strangely shut. She thought him tired unusually often, but the hot summer seemed to account for this. By-and-by, he would take his autumn holiday, and that would set all right.
But there came a day of awakening—sudden and unexpected.
She had had her Bible class as usual one Sunday afternoon, with the half-dozen girls who regularly came to the Rectory for that purpose. It was a very interesting hour commonly to them all; not least so to Nancy Dunn, who by this time loved Miss Wilmot dearly. This day's lesson proved certainly not less interesting than usual.
Annie had chosen the subject of trouble, and of how to bear trouble. She had talked it over with her father beforehand, and she had much to say about the bright side of trouble, the often good effects of it, and the spirit in which it should be borne.
"I dare say some of you remember that sermon of my father's about being always ready," Annie said, in the course of the class.
Nancy smiled a response.