Pam put her head down close beside the thin white face on the pillow.
“Perhaps Galena lost heart too,” she said, “and that was why she was not as wise as you wanted her to be. You will have to leave it now, Reggie, because it is all over, but you must not think hard things of Galena, for I am sure she is suffering horribly.”
“I should say she is by the way she tries to hustle Nathan round, but it takes a deal of pushing to get him to move, so it does not matter. She is downright good to me, and I like living here. I hope they will let me stay always; they won’t lose by it in the long run.”
“I am sure they will not!” said Pam. Then she fetched out The Pilgrim’s Progress, which was one of the few books to be found in the Gittins’s house, and read to him the stirring account of Christian’s fight with Apollyon in the Valley of Humiliation. It was when she looked up to answer some eager question of his that she caught a glimpse of a figure in a very much beflowered hat coming rapidly across the field, and she realized that Galena had found the ordeal too much for her after all.
“There is the book, you can read about it yourself if you like,” she said, thrusting the musty-smelling volume into Reggie’s hands. Then she rose from her chair and hurried out to meet Galena.
“I could not face it. I made Nathan stop the horse and let me get out,” said Miss Gittins, who was very pale under the smart hat. “He wanted to turn round and drive me back here, but I just would not have that. Folks would have been able to talk fine if we had both been away from meeting; but if Nathan was there in his place, it would only look as if I had stayed at home with Reggie. I can’t help feeling that it is partly my doing that Mose went so wrong, and I am a miserable woman to-day.”
Pam slid her arm through Galena’s, and turned with her to the strip of forest that still remained on one side of the home pasture. There were big trees here, spruce and birch and maple, and to walk in their shade on this glowing summer morning was like being in some vast cathedral. There were the hush and the calm of the cloistered building, and the sense of nearness to the Infinite. Oh, the forest was wonderful on a day like this! especially when one could turn away from the sordid little brown house, with its clustering barns and piggeries, that stood on the edge of this forest fane.
Galena was sobbing and moaning in her pain. All the way back from the place where she had stopped the wagon she had walked with her head in the air and her mouth set in hard lines of endurance, but when Pam had met her with that silent sympathy, and had drawn her into the shade of the trees, her stoicism broke down, and she could only sob in her misery.
“If I could have the past over again!” wailed the stricken woman.
“You have the present and the future,” Pam reminded her, with the rare wisdom which came to her in moments of need like this.