Were I in mortal peril I could not have been more vigilantly on my guard. Not for the world would I permit her to know what was passing in my mind—at least not yet—and as far as possible I resumed my old manner. I even simulated more dejection than I felt, to counterbalance the flash of hope that I feared she had recognized on the previous evening.
I well knew that all her woman's strength, that all her woman's pride and exalted sense of honor would bind her to him, who was serenely secure in his trust. My one hope was that her woman's heart was my ally; that it would prove the strongest; that it would so assert itself that truth and honor would at last range themselves on its side. Little did the simple, frank old Quaker realize the passionate alternations of hope and fear that I brought to his breakfast-table that bright Sunday.
All that my guarded scrutiny could gather was that Miss Warren was a little too devoted and thoughtful of her urbane lover, and that her cheerfulness lacked somewhat in spontaneity.
It was agreed at the breakfast-table that we should all go to meeting.
"Mrs. Yocomb," I said, finding her alone for a moment, "won't you be moved this morning? I need one of your sermons more than any heathen in Africa. Whatever your faith is, I believe in it, for I've seen its fruits."
"If a message is given to me I will not be silent; if not, it would be presumptuous to speak. But my prayer is that the Spirit whom we worship may speak to thee, and that thou wilt listen. Unless He speaks, my poor words would be of no avail."
"You are a mystery to me, Mrs. Yocomb, with your genial homely farm life here, and your mystical spiritual heights at the meeting-house. You seem to go from the kitchen by easy and natural transition to regions beyond the stars, and to pass without hesitancy from the companionship of us poor mortals into a Presence that is to me supremely awful."
"Thee doesn't understand, Richard. The little faith I have I take with me to the kitchen, and I'm not afraid of my Father in heaven because he is so great and I'm so little. Is Zillah afraid of her father?"
"I suppose you are right, and I admit that I don't understand, and I don't see how I could reason it out."
"God's children," she replied, "as all children, come to believe many blessed truths without the aid of reason. It was not reason that taught me my mother's love, and yet, now that I have children, it seems very reasonable. I think I learned most from what she said to me and did for me. If ever children were assured of love by their Heavenly Father, we have been; if it is possible for a human soul to be touched by loving, unselfish devotion, let him read the story of Christ."