"Oh, do!" Susan exclaimed. "Jane, come back! Think of another romance, and Matilda, too! Well, what next!"
Matilda smiled quite radiantly. "We met on the train the day I left here," she began; "it was right off. He took me out on the back platform of the car and opened my eyes to life, and we just suited, didn't we, Matthew?"
"Tell it all," said Mr. Beamer; "tell the beginning."
"Yes," said his wife, "I will, I'll tell it all. It's so splendid it would be a pity to skip anything. You see, he looked at me and—well, really, Matthew, I think you'd better tell the first part."
"No, you tell," said Mr. Beamer.
"No, Matthew, you tell it, and I'll help anywhere I can."
"Well," said her husband, "then I'll begin with saying, Sister Susan, Niece Jane, and young man, that I'd better tell you what I am, first of all, because I'm the only one of the kind in the world so far as I know. You see, one of those Bible miracles, that no one can seem to lay hold of any more, got into me, and I'm the result."
"That is all true," interposed Matilda, her plain face quite metamorphosed, as she looked at her husband and then at them. "Every word he says is true, and it's all miracles."
"You see I was just a plain, ordinary man, with a nice business and a good disposition," Mr. Beamer went on, "and I did get so awful tired of things as they were going, and I used to wish everything was different, and then one day, all of a God-blessed sudden, it came over me, with a shock like lightning, that wanting things different is the first step to getting 'em different, and that if you've got the brain to see what's lacking, you've got the body to turn to and help fill up the hole. I didn't get religion out of a book; I got it just like that. I was sitting in a rocking-chair with a palm-leaf fan, and I got up and put the fan on the shelf and knew I was all made new. The very next day I read about a doctor as set up some nurses—"
"Oh, my goodness," Susan cried, "hear that, Jane!"