There was silence between them for a moment; then Rosamund said, only wondering at herself long afterwards, "It says more than that! It is telling me that there is something in life worth while, that there's courage and goodness in many a dark corner where we'd never think of looking for them; oh, it is teaching me a great deal!"
"Yes," Grace Tobet agreed, and all barriers between them were gone.
They found so much to say that the hour the doctor spent with Joe passed like a moment. When at last he came out of the house and back to the spring for a drink of the pure water, the two women walked together to the buggy; and before she took her place Rosamund, yielding to a sudden impulse of which she knew she would have been incapable a fortnight earlier, turned and clasped both of the older woman's hands, and looked into her face.
"Will you be friends with me?" she asked simply.
Grace Tobet's eyes widened. It seemed long before she spoke. Then, "Yes," she said, and both knew that there was something sealed between them.
"May I bring a friend of mine to see you? She lost her baby boy last year, and—and we are afraid she is going to be—blind. Perhaps you can comfort her, in some way. She needs friends. May I bring her?"
"Pray do," Grace said, in the quaint mountain speech.
When they were slowly climbing the mountain, the doctor turned to Rosamund with a quizzical smile. "You and Grace seemed to progress somewhat!" he said.
For a few moments Rosamund pondered; then she met his look, but there was no smile on her face.
"Do you know," she said, "I have always thought that the people I lived among were the only ones who really knew life, the only ones who felt, or thought, or lived! Lately I seem to have come into a new world."