"I wouldn't go in for nothing fancy," she said, as they completed their task; "the less you stir up her and the house, the easier it'll be for me when I come back. You don't want to ever forget that I'm coming back, and don't put any fancy ideas into her head. There's plenty to do here without going out of your way to upset my ways."
"I'll remember," said Jane.
Then they started up-stairs, and a few minutes later the Sunshine Nurse was alone in her own room, free to stand quietly by the window and let her outward gaze form a bond between the still beauty of a country night and the glad vision of work in plenty, and that of a kind which Miss Matilda couldn't prohibit, because she knew not the world in which such work is done.
"Not—" said Jane to herself with a little whimsical smile—"not but what I'm 'most sure that my teaching will be manifest in a lot of material changes, too, but by the time that she comes back, her own feelings will be sufficiently 'alligatored' so that she'll see life differently also. God's plan is just as much for her good in sending her away as it is for mine in sending me here, and I mustn't forget that for a minute. I'll be busy and she'll be busy, and we'll both be learning and we'll both be teaching and we'll both be being necessary."
She drew a chair close and sat down, full of her own bright and helpful thoughts. Much of love and wonder came flooding into her through the medium of the sweet, calm night without. "It's like being among angels," she fancied, and felt a close companionship with those who had known the Great White Messengers face to face.
Long she sat there, praying the prayer that is just one indrawn breath of content and uplifted consciousness. Not many girls of twenty-two would have seen so much in that not unusual situation, and yet it was to her so brimful of fair possibilities that she could hardly wait for morning to begin work.
When she rose to undress, when she climbed into the plain, hard bed that received her so kindly, when she slept at last, all was with the same sense of responsibility mixed with energetic intention. All that she had "asked" in the usual sense of "asking in prayer" had been "to be shown exactly how," and because she was one of those who know every prayer to be answered, in the hour of its making she knew that to be answered, too. "I'll be led along," was her last thought before sleeping, and it swept the fringe of her consciousness, leaving her to enter dreamland with the happy security of a trusting child.
It really seemed no time at all before Matilda rapped loudly on her door, bringing her suddenly to the knowledge that the hour to begin all the longed-for work was at hand.
"Five o'clock!" Matilda howled gently through the crack.
"Yes, yes," she cried in response.