She rose as she spoke and bade her a gentle good-night, and Unavella walked slowly back to her kitchen again. "Ef the angul Gabriel," she soliloquized, "starts in ter searchin' the earth this night fer the Lord's chosen ones, there ain't no fear but what he'll cum ter this house, the fust thing."
Up-stairs Miss Diana was whispering softly, as she looked up at the stars with a trustful smile. "Oh, my Father, if it is thy will that I should do this thing, thou wilt send me the right ones."
CHAPTER XXI.
John Randolph did some hard thinking during the weeks which followed Richard Trueman's death. It was no light task which he had so cheerfully imposed upon himself. The boy was constitutionally delicate and fretted so constantly after his father that his health began to suffer, and it grew to be a very pale face which welcomed John with a smile when he returned from the office. The style of living was bad for him. He was alone all day, except for an occasional visit from the good-natured German woman who kept their rooms, and, although he was a voracious reader, the doctor had forbidden all thought of study for a year, even had there been a school near enough for him to attend, where John would have been willing to send him. He ought to be where the air was pure and the surroundings cheerful. John would have preferred to put up with the discomfort of his present quarters and lay by the addition to his salary towards the more speedy realization of his day-dream, but John Randolph had never found much time to think of himself; there were always so many other people in the world to be attended to.
"Dick, my boy," he said cheerily one evening, after they had finished what he pronounced a sumptuous repast, "I have a presentiment that this month will witness a turning point in our career. I believe you and I are going to become suburbanites."
The boy's sad eyes grew wide with wonder.
"What do you mean, John?"
"Well you see, Dick True, it is this way. As soon as I get my degree—earn the right to put M.D. after my name, you know,—I am going to take two rubber bags, fill one with sunshine and one with pure air, full of the scent of rose leaves and clover and strawberries—ah, Dick, you'd like to smell that, wouldn't you?—and carry one in each pocket; then, when my patients come to me for advice, the first dose I shall give them will be out of my rubber bags, and in six cases out of ten I believe they'll get better without any drug at all. You see, Dick True, the trouble is, our Father has given us a whole world full of air and sunlight to be happy in, and we poison the air with smoke and shut ourselves away from the sunshine in boxes of brick and mortar, only letting a stray beam come in occasionally through slits in the walls which we call windows. It's no wonder we are such poor, miserable concerns. You can't fancy an Indian suffering from nervous prostration, can you, Dick? and it doesn't strike you as probable that Robinson Crusoe had any predisposition to lung trouble? So you see, Dick True, as it is a poor doctor who is afraid of his own medicine, I am going to prescribe it first of all for ourselves, and we will go where unadulterated oxygen may be had for the smelling, and we can draw in sunshine with every breath."
The pale face brightened.
"Oh, that will be lovely! I do get so tired of these old streets. But
John,—"