"A hundred and fifty thousand dollars," she murmured; "and to think what I'd do with that money!" For some minutes she studied the picture in silence, then she sighed: "Well, they do look natural like; but only think what a fool to pay a hundred and fifty thousand for a couple of farm-folks out in a field!"
And yet—it was not to the kitchen shelf Hephzibah carried the picture that night, but to the parlor—the somber, sacred parlor. There she propped it up on the center-table among plush photograph-albums and crocheted mats—the dearest of Hephzibah's treasures.
Hephzibah could scarcely have explained it herself, but after the minister's call that day she fell into the way of going often into the parlor to look at her picture. At first its famous price graced it with a halo of gold; but in time this was forgotten, and the picture itself, with its silent, bowed figures, appealed to her with a power she could not understand.
"There's a story to it—I know there's a story to it!" she cried at last one day; and forthwith she hunted up an old lead-pencil stub and a bit of yellowed note-paper.
It was a long hour Hephzibah spent then, an hour of labored thinking and of careful guiding of cramped fingers along an unfamiliar way; yet the completed note, when it reached Helen Raymond's hands, was wonderfully short.
The return letter was long, and, though Hephzibah did not know it, represented hours of research in bookstores and in libraries. It answered not only Hephzibah's questions, but attempted to respond to the longing and heart-hunger Miss Raymond was sure she detected between the lines of Hephzibah's note. Twelve hours after it was written, Hephzibah was on her knees before the picture.
"I know you now—I know you!" she whispered exultingly. "I know why you're real and true. Your master who painted you was like us once—like us, and like you! He knew what it was to dig and dig; he knew what it was to work and work until his back and his head and his feet and his hands ached and ached—he knew! And so he painted you!
"She says you're praying; that you've stopped your work and 'turned to higher things.' She says we all should have an Angelus in our lives each day. Good God!—as if she knew!"—Hephzibah was on her feet now, her hands to her head.
"An Angelus?—me?" continued the woman scornfully. "And where? The dish-pan?—the wash-tub?—the chicken-yard? A fine Angelus, that! And yet"—Hephzibah dropped to her knees again—"you look so quiet, so peaceful, and, oh, so—rested!"
"For the land's sake, Hetty, what be you doin'? Have you gone clean crazy?"—It was Theron in the parlor doorway.