To the mountain woman this stranger was a being from another sphere, who could not touch her own at any point of intercourse; while Rosamund was too deeply moved by the woman's story, by the livid mark on her temple, by the squalor of her dress and surroundings contrasting so strongly with the intelligence of her face, to find words. It was Mrs. Tobet who first remembered one of those phrases of common coin which are the medium of conversation the world over.
"Stranger about here?" she asked.
"I am staying with Mrs. Cary on the mountain," Rosamund replied; and, as, in a flash, the other woman's face was lit by a smile scarcely less radiant than Mother Cary's own.
"A friend o' Mother Cary's, be ye? I'm glad to see ye! I can't ask you into the front room, but there's a seat in my spring-house, real pleasant and cool; won't ye come try it?"
She led the way through the neglected garden to the little spring-house that was built of the rough stone of the hillsides, roofed over with sod. In front of the door-space was a wooden bench, where Rosamund sat down, while Grace drew a glass of sparkling water from the cool spring inside. It was a delicious draught.
"My baby could jest pull herself up by that bench," Grace Tobet said, as she took the empty glass. "She used to play here while I tended to the milk. Joe's sold the cow now; but that didn't make any difference; there wasn't any reason for keeping her."
The woman's deep-set dark eyes strained out towards the mountain-tops. Rosamund felt herself suddenly brought face to face with some primal force of which she had hitherto known nothing; for the first time in her life she looked upon the agony of bereft mother-love laid bare. She had been with Eleanor through her loss, but Eleanor's grief had seemed to turn her to white stone; this other mother's was a fiercely scorching, consuming flame of anguish before which Rosamund shrank away as from the blast of a furnace. Before she dared to speak, however, Grace Tobet's face was smiling again.
"I know you must like it up there," she said. "I do miss the mountains so, livin' down here in the valley. I don't know what I'd do ef it wasn't for Mother Cary's light. I look up there for it every night of my life, an' it's always there. An' I ain't the only one it talks to, neither."
"It has its message for everyone who sees it, I think," Rosamund agreed. "I know, because I am living under it!"
Grace looked into her eyes, and nodded. "Ain't it so?" she replied. "Why, there's never been a night when I was in trouble that her little lamp hasn't said to me, 'Here I am, honey, an' I know all about it. When it gets so bad you can't stand it, you jest send for me; I'll come!' An' she does come, too!"