She did not let the noisy group miss anything in her demeanor. And yet she was thinking of that summer day, and the poor roses she had taken so unwillingly. How she had shrunk from them all through the journey! How she had tossed them out, poor things, to be fought over by street arabs. They had come back to her with healing on their wings. And that John Travis should have seen them, and the two little waifs of unkind fortune. Ah, how could she have been so fatally blind and cruel that day among the roses? And all for such a very little thing.
What could she say to this simple, trustful child? If her faith and her beliefs had gone outside of orthodox lines, for lack of the training all people are supposed to get in this Christian land, was there any way in which she could amend it? No, she could not even disturb it. John Travis should gather in the harvest he had planted; for, like Dil, she believed him in sincere earnest. She “almost knew that he meant to set out on the journey to heaven,” if not in the literal way poor, trusting little Dil took it. And she honored him as she never had before.
She came back to Dil for a few moments.
“Don’t you want to hear about the picture?” she asked. “It quite went out of my mind. Mr. Travis exhibited it in London, and a friend bought it and brought it home. I saw it a fortnight ago. So you brought him a great deal of good fortune and money.”
“I’m so glad,” her eyes shone with a soul radiance; “for he gev us some money—it was for Bess, an’ we buyed such lots of things. We had such a splendid time! Five dollars—twicet—an’ Mrs. Bolan, an’ she was so glad ’bout the singin’. But I wisht it had been Bess. He couldn’t make no such beautiful picture out’n me. Bess looked jes’ ’s if she could talk.”
“He put you in that beautiful thicket of roses.” Ah, how well he had remembered it! “I do not think any one would have you changed, but you were not so thin then.”
“No;” Dil gave the soft little laugh so different from the other children. “I was quite a little chunk, mammy alwers said, an’ I don’t mind, only Patsey wants me to get fatter. Mebbe they make people look beautifuller in pictures,” and she gave a serious little sigh.
Then the supper-bell rang. Dil held tightly to the slim hand.
“They’re all so good,” she said earnestly. “But folks is diff’rent. Some come clost to you,” and she made an appealing movement of nearness. “Then they couldn’t understand ’bout me an’ Bess—that she’s jes’ waitin’ somewheres till I kin find out how to go to her, an’ then he’ll tell us which way to start for heaven. I’m so glad you know him.”
Dil tried again to eat, but did not accomplish much. She was brimful of joy. Her eyes shone, and a happy smile kept fluttering about her face, flushing it delicately.