“Not at all,” replied Mr. Sutherland, heartily. “Now I am going away, and I shall send Aunt Dinah to see that you have what you want for supper. Come, pet.”
So he went away, taking Lillie with him, and left happy Tom, sitting in the twilight, grateful and content, with the words of the Psalmist making sweet music in his heart:
“Thou shalt keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on thee.”
After this first day of pleasure Tom could not be kept away from the window, and so, day after day, his chair was moved up to it, and himself put into it, all wrapped about with shawls and supported by pillows, and left to spend the day by the window. He had numerous visitors—not too many—but just enough to make him feel that he was not alone.
One morning, after he had been up about a week, he was sitting by the open window as usual, watching the cotton-pickers in the distance, when he heard steps coming up the stairs. “Somebody is coming to see me,” he thought, so he listened, still looking out of the window. Something attracted his attention there, so that when the door opened he did not immediately turn his head. There were quick steps across the floor and some one came kneeling by his chair, and then he turned and looked down into the eager face of his sister Martha.
“Oh, Martha! Martha!” he cried, seizing her hand and bending down to her face, “has God sent me this joy too? My dear sister, I have wanted to see you more than anything on earth.”
“And I am here, Tom,” she replied joyfully—“come to take good care of you. Mr. Sutherland wrote me that you would not send for me for fear I could not come, but that you wanted me very much. How are you, dear Tom?”
“I believe, Martha,” he said, still holding her hand and looking down into her face, “I believe I am perfectly happy.”
“And how is the Sunday-school?” his sister asked. “Oh, you can’t think how Miss Mason and I have enjoyed that school!”
“It’s perfectly wonderful, Martha,” he replied with glowing eyes. “It seems to me that for the past few days, when the thought of it came, those four grand words, ‘What hath God wrought?’ have been the only ones which could anyway rest me. Listen while I tell.”