"Why don't He, then?" said Edith, almost in irritation. Then, in a sudden passion of grief, she hid her face in her sister's lap, and sobbed, "Oh, Laura, Laura, I feel I am losing my faith in Him. Why does He treat me so?"
Here Laura's face grew troubled and fearful also. Her faith in Christ was so blended with her faith in Edith that she could not separate them in a moment. "I don't understand it, Edie," she faltered. "He seems to have taken care of me, and has been very kind since that—that night But I don't understand your feeling so."
"Oh, oh, oh!" sobbed Edith, "I don't know what to think—what to believe; and I fear I shall hurt your faith," and she shut herself up in her room, and looked despairingly out to where the vines were drooping in the fierce heat.
"If they don't get help to-day, my hopes will wither like their leaves," she said, with pallid lips. As the sun declined in the west, she went out and stood beside them, as one might by a dying friend. Her fresh young face seemed almost growing aged and wrinkled under the ordeal. She had prayed that afternoon, as never before in her life, for help, and now, with a despairing gesture upward, she said:
"Look at that brazen sky!"
But the noise of the opening gate caused her to look thither, and there was Arden entering, with a great barrel on wheels, which was drawn by a horse. His heart, so weak toward her, had relented during the day. "I vowed to serve her, and I will," he thought. "I will be her slave, if she will permit."
Edith did not understand at first, and he came toward her so humbly, as if to ask a great favor, that it would have been comic, had not his sincerity made it pathetic.
"Miss Allen," he said, "I saw you trying to water your berries. Perhaps I can do it better, as I have here the means of working on a larger scale."
Edith seized his hand and said, with tears: "You are like an angel of light; how can I thank you enough?"
Her manner puzzled him to-night quite as much as on the previous occasion. "Why does she act as if her life depended on these few berries?" he vainly asked himself. "They can't be so poor as to be in utter want. I wish she would speak frankly to me."