CHAPTER V.
"TRUST."
"Alas! we can not draw habitual breath in the thin air of life's supremer heights. We can not make each meal a sacrament."—Lowell.
T had seemed to Bethany, in the experience of that sunrise on Lookout Mountain, she could never feel despondent again; but away from the uplifting influences of the place, back among the painful memories of the old home, she fought as hard a fight with her returning doubts as ever Christian did in his Valley of Humiliation.
For a week since her return the weather had been intensely warm. It made Jack irritable, and sapped her own strength.
There came a day when everything went wrong. She had practiced her shorthand exercises all morning, until her head ached almost beyond endurance. The grocer presented a bill much larger than she had expected. While he was receipting it, a boy came to collect for the gas, and there were only two dimes left in her purse. Then Jack upset a little cut-glass vase that was standing on the table beside him. It was broken beyond repair, and the water ruined the handsome binding of a borrowed book that would have to be replaced.
About noon Dr. Trent called to see Jack. He had brought a new kind of brace that he wanted tried.