There four little voices took up the wail of grief, and more than one rough fireman drew his sleeve hurriedly across his eyes.
“She is through with all suffering,” said good old Dr. Helps, who had been working busily over the poor, crushed body.
“It’s a blessed thing for the child,” said Deacon Carter, as they walked away, “but it’s a strange Providence that took the one bit of leaven out of that miserable batch of humanity.”
Upon the pine coffin, the girls in Miss Cox’s class laid a wreath of beautiful hot-house flowers; but all over the lid, and inside, around the pale face and over the white robe, were fresh, fragrant pond-lilies, their subtile perfume filling the room. No one knew who scattered them there, only as Miss Marvin laid one tenderly between the waxen fingers, Bill Finnegan said huskily, “Thank’ee, ma’am; she liked ’em best of anything.”
The next Sabbath and the next, in the empty seat where Phosy had always sat, lay a bunch of the same pure, lovely lilies. Nobody knew how they came there, but their sweet breath seemed like pleasant memories of her who had gone. The fourth Sabbath an awkward, ungainly figure, in coarse homespun, shuffled down the aisle and stopped beside the row of neatly-dressed boys. Dick moved a little nearer to Varley, and motioned the new-comer to sit down.
“I—it’s Bill Finnegan, ma’am, an’ he’ll not be gettin’ in the way,” he stammered, as Miss Marvin left her seat to speak with him. “You see, she was allus askin’ me to come, but I didn’t think so much about it, then. I’d like, bein’ as this was her class, if you don’t mind. I’ll do the best I can; she was forever talkin’ about the things she heard tell of here, an’ ef I could learn, I’m thinkin’ it won’t harm a feller.”
Up-stairs, in the pew nearest the door, sat Mrs. Harte in the faded black bonnet which had done her service when her husband’s mother died years before, when “Daniel” was sober and industrious,—sat, with the tears running down her cheeks, getting, as she phrased it, “a fill of the good things Phosy talked so much about, to stand her through the long, lonesome week.”
And not many days afterwards there came to Dr. Helps’ door—for the doctor’s genial, sympathizing heart was known far and wide—a great, rough man, with blood-shotten eyes and haggard face.
“I want to sign the pledge, if so be you think it’s any use,” he said. “I’m only old Dan Harte, that ev’rybody gin up long ago, except her,—Tryphosy. She kep’ talkin’ an’ talkin’ in sech a lovin’ way, an’ only the Sunday afore, when she went away to meetin’ she kissed me. I was sober for a wonder, an’ sez she, ‘Father, if the Bible is true, what will you do when you come to die?’ I can’t git them words out of my ears, an’ you see I know there must be a something, to so kind of change Tryphosy from the fiery, hifalutin thing she was, to the purty-spoken, quiet, happy little cretur she got to be. And I thought mabbee, seein’ I’d quit drinkin’ ag’in an’ ag’in, an’ couldn’t never hold out, if there was anything in this ere religion Phosy got hold of, to help a feller, it’s Dan Harte what wants it.”
Good old Dr. Helps! not content to send away this weak fellow-mortal with a chapter of good advice, and some harmless tonic from his medicine-case, but who could and did kneel down beside him then and there, with a faith strong enough to hold up even this wreck of humanity for the Divine healing. Surely of him shall it be true, “Before they call I will answer; while they are yet speaking I will hear.”