While the cake was being got ready, Clare went out to look at the beehives with Deb.
They chatted over them for a few minutes, and then Deb put her hand gently on Clare's arm.
'We've heard o' your sad loss, my dear, and our old hearts have ached for you. 'Tis a heavy cross to have the hope of bein' a happy wife snatched away, and a lone and loveless spinster's lot instead stretchin' out in front o' you. 'Tis a long and weary road for young feet to travel!'
Poor Clare burst into tears. She could not bear, as yet, to be reminded of her trouble.
'Don't talk of it, Deb,' she said between her sobs; 'it only makes it worse.'
'Ay, ay,' said the old woman, wiping a sympathetic tear away from her own eye with the corner of her apron; 'ye'll be feelin' it sore for a time. But the good Lord will comfort you, if no one else will.'
'It is so dreadful to have to live, whether you like it or not,' said Clare, in that little burst of confidence she sometimes showed to strangers, though never to her sisters.
'But seems as if it would not be easier to die if one left the work that has been set us to others to finish,' said Deb gravely.
'I have no work at all,' Clare responded quickly, almost passionately. 'I could have been a good wife—I hope I could—but there's nothing left me now; no one wants me, and there's nothing to do, and I'm sick of everybody and everything!'
'I'm no preacher,' said Deb meditatively, 'and I don't live a saintly life, so it's no good my settin' myself above my fellows, but Patty and me has our Bibles out once every weekday, and most of all Sundays we're readin' it, so I'll make so bold as to pass you a verse that I did a powerful lot of thinkin' over last Sunday. 'Tis this, and maybe, with your quick, eddicated brain, you'll take it in quicker nor I did—"Strengthened with all might, according to His glorious power, unto all patience and longsuffering, with joyfulness." Maybe that's your work just at present, my dear. Shall we go in now?'