“You have made a new child of her,” said Miss Mary delightedly. “I thought her a dull and unattractive little thing, but such lives as theirs wear out the charms and graces of childhood before they have time to bloom. We used to think the poor had many compensations, and amongst them health, that richer people went envying. Would any mother in comfortable circumstances change her child’s physique for these stunted frames and half-vitalized brains?”
Virginia Deering made some new resolves. It was not enough to merely feed and clothe. She thought of Dilsey Quinn’s love and devotion; of Patsey Muldoon’s brave endeavor to rescue Owen, and keep him from going to the bad, and his generosity in providing a home for Dil, to save her from her brutalized mother. Ah, yes; charity was a grander thing,—a love for humanity.
Dil came to say good-night. Virginia was startled by the unearthly beauty, the heavenly content, in her eyes that transfigured her.
“You breathe too short and fast,” she said. “You are too much excited.”
“I d’n’ know—I think it’s ’cause he’s comin’. ’N’ I’ve waited so, ’n’ now it’s all light ’n’ beautiful, ’n’ I don’t feel worried no more.”
“You must go to sleep and get rested, and—get well.” Yes, she must get well, and have the different kind of life Virginia began to plan for her.
A soft rain set in. There was such a tender patter on the leaves that Dil almost laughed in sympathetic joy. Such delightful fragrance everywhere! For a moment she loathed the city, and it seemed as if she could not go back to the crowded rooms and close air. But only for a little while. John Travis would set her on the road to heaven.
It was curious how bits of the hymn came back to her. She could not have repeated the words consecutively—it was like the strain of remembered melody one follows in one’s brain, and yet cannot give it voice. She seemed actually to see it.
“O’er all those wide extended plains,
Shines one eternal day.”
Eternal day! and no night. Forever to be walking about with Bess, when the Lord Jesus had taken her in his arms and made her like other children. Oh, did Sadie Carr know that in heaven she would be straight and nice and beautiful? She must ask Miss Deering to tell her. Then her heart went out with trembling, yearning tenderness toward her mother. Couldn’t the Lord Jesus do something to keep her from drinking gin and going up to the Island? Was little Dan in a happy home like this, with plenty to eat?—boys were always hungry. She used to be before Bess went away, but it seemed as if she should never be hungry again.