"He that is greatest among you shall be as he that doth serve."
These ten last years of service have, however, aged him much!
I could not conceal from myself that they had. There are traces of suffering on the expressive face, and there is a touch of feebleness in the form and step.
"How is it," I said to Eva, "that Elsè or Thekla did not tell us of this? He is certainly much feebler."
"They are always with him," she said, "and we never see what Time is doing, love; but only what he has done."
Her words made me thoughtful. Could it be that such changes were passing on us also, and that we were failing to observe them?
When Dr. Luther and the throng had passed, we returned into the house, and Eva resumed her knitting, while I recommenced the study of my sermon; but secretly I raised my eyes from my books and surveyed her. If time had indeed thus been changing that beloved form, it was better I should know it, to treasure more the precious days he was so treacherously stealing.
Yet scarcely, with the severest scrutiny, could I detect the trace of age or suffering on her face or form. The calm brow was as white and calm as ever. The golden hair, smoothly braided under her white matronly cap, was as free from grey as even our Agnes', who was flitting in and out of the winter sunshine, busy with household work in the next room. There was a roundness on the cheek, although, perhaps, its curve was a little changed; and when she looked up, and met my eyes, was there not the very same happy, child-like smile as ever, that seemed to overflow from a world of sunshine within?
"No!" I said; "Eva, thank God, I have not deluded myself! Time has not stolen a march on you yet."
"Think how I have been shielded, Fritz," she said. "What a sunny and sheltered life mine has been, never encountering any storm except under the shelter of such a home and such a love. But Dr. Luther has been so long the one foremost and highest, on whose breast the first force of every storm has burst."