She made good her warning, and never became a "solemn, ghostly sort of a missionary." She was usually as wholesome as the sunshine, or if the occasion required, as a stiff north wind, and had a pronounced little way of her own, when things went wrong at home or in the church, of giving all concerned the benefit of some practical common sense. But she also, in the main, kept her pledge to endure patiently, as she had borne her hunger on the mountain, and many privations and trials of their lot.
While she sustained her husband's hands and doubled his usefulness abroad, he generally found at home a sunny philosopher who laughed him out of half his troubles.
With increasing frequency he said, "Lottie, you are so wholesome; there is not a morbid, unnatural trait in you."
And she inspired him to preach such a wholesome, sunny Gospel that it won even the most prejudiced.
One evening, a feeble, aged man stepped down from the train, and was borne off in triumph by Hemstead to the warmest corner of his hearth.
Lottie gave him such a welcome that the old gentleman cried out:
"Hold on. My goodness gracious! haven't you sobered down yet?"
Then, while Frank stood near, with his hand upon her shoulder, looking as proud of her as a man could be, and with just such a black-eyed cherub in her arms as she must have been herself twenty odd years before, her face aglow with health, happiness, and content, she asked, "Well, uncle, what do you think of your meddling now?"
Mr. Dimmerly went off into one of his old-time chuckles, as he said,
"This is one of the things which the world never can 'stop.'"