Hatty glanced her eyes round the room, and saw Aunt Barbara’s spectacles on the mantel-piece.
She jumped up and handed them to her. “You may give me my Bible, if you choose,” said Aunt Barbara, in a pleasanter tone than she had used that morning.
Hatty laid the great Bible on Aunt Barbara’s lap, and for a few moments the old lady seemed nodding; but she soon began to rub her spectacles as if they were not clean, and then she put her hand to her head, and said, “old folks can’t sit and read all day like young ones.”
“That is just what grandma tells me,” said Hatty; “and she says young people ought to remember that, and learn a great many Bible verses to think about when they are too sick or too old to read.”
“But if they did not do that when they were young,” said Aunt Barbara, “did grandma say what they should do then?”
“She did not say anything about that,” said Hatty, looking puzzled. In another moment she added, in her most pleasant way, “would not you like me to read to you a little, Aunt Barbara?”
“If you can make that little tongue of yours go slow enough, for me to understand, you may try,” said Aunt Barbara.
Hatty drew her chair close up to Aunt Barbara, and was going to ask when she should begin, when the old lady said, pettishly, “Go round to the other side, child! don’t you know that’s my deaf ear?” Hatty moved as she was requested, and then Aunt Barbara told her to read the 103d Psalm. Hatty was a very pleasant reader, and she had lately taken great pains not to speak too rapidly.
Aunt Barbara must have been pleased, for she kept Hatty reading, reading, until the family came home from church; and when she turned to leave the room, she said, “Thank you, child; I think going to your grandma’s has done you good.”
Mrs. Lee had not told Aunt Barbara of Hatty’s letter about her new resolutions, yet the old lady felt that some change must have taken place in Hatty to make her willing to give up her own pleasure to sit in that quiet room with a sick, fretful old woman, as Aunt Barbara knew herself to be that morning.