"So we did it," said Matilda, "and when I took the baby back to the woman, she burst out crying and said she'd tried to hold in all day and just couldn't any longer, cause her mother was sick and had been sick so long, and she couldn't leave the children to go to her 'cause the children was the neighbor's and left with her to board, and she'd never liked children and only took 'em 'cause her mother needed the money."
"Showing," interrupted Mr. Beamer, "how we'd misjudged her and her hard lines, which is another feature of my crusade, as lots don't think enough about."
"But what come next was just like a story, too," Matilda said. "When I got to Mrs. Camp's at last, I found Mrs. Camp so changed that if I hadn't met Matthew on the train and got something to hold on to, I couldn't have stayed in the house an hour."
"Why, what was the matter with Mrs. Camp?" Susan asked anxiously.
"Why, all Mrs. Camp's family is married now, and it seems she was so lonely she's turned into a social settler or some such thing, and her nice, quiet house where I'd looked to rest was one swarm of Italians learning English and girls learning sewing and women asking advice and such a chaos of Bedlam you never dreamed. If it hadn't been for my just having got religion that way, I'd have turned around and come straight back home. But as it was, I didn't have time to do anything but get into my blue print and take hold right with her and get some order into things in general."
"Oh, Aunt Matilda!" Jane's face was radiant.
"Afternoons Matthew came with an auto, and he'd take me off with the back seat full of children, and we'd hunt hard lines anywhere they looked likely."
"And then, of course, we soon got married," said Mr. Beamer.
"Yes, and that's all," said Matilda. "Now did you ever?"
There was a sudden hush, until finally Susan said, through tears: "Oh, Matilda,—it's like something in heaven's got loose and fell right down over us, isn't it?"