"I know I does, but I ain't; and lots o' women—them as has had easy times and their way made smooth for them—look little more than gells when they are thirty-five; and the men run after 'em as fast as if they was only twenty. But I'm an old woman, I am, and I've never had time to be a young one, and I've never had a beau nor nothing."
"It seems now, Jemima, as if the Lord was dealing a bit hard with you; but never you fret yourself; He'll explain it all and make it all up to you in His own good time."
"I only hope He may, Mr. Bateson."
"My lass, do you remember how Saint Paul said, 'From henceforth let no man trouble me, for I bear in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus'? Now it seems to me that all the gray hairs and the wrinkles and the roughness that come to us when we are working for others and doing our duty, are nothing more nor less than the marks of the Lord Jesus."
"That's a comfortin' view of the matter, I don't deny."
"There are lots o' men in this world, Jemima, and still more women, who grow old before their time working for other people; and I take it that when folks talk o' their wrinkles, the Lord says, 'My Name shall be in their foreheads'; and when folks talk o' their gray hairs, He says, 'They shall walk with Me in white: for they are worthy.' And why do we mark the things that belong to us? Why, so as we can know 'em again and can claim 'em as our own afore the whole world. And that's just why the Lord marks us: so as all the world shall know as we are His, and so as no man shall ever pluck us out of His Hand."
Jemima looked gratefully up at the kindly prophet who was trying to comfort her. "Law! Mr. Bateson, that's a consolin' way of looking at things, and I only hope as you're right. But all the same, I'd have liked to have had a beau of my own just for onst, like other gells. I dessay it's very wicked o' me to feel like this, and it's enough to make the Lord angry with me; but it don't seem to me as there's anything in religion that quite makes up for never havin' had a beau o' your own."
"The Lord won't be angry with you, my lass; don't you fear. He made women and He understands 'em, and He ain't the one to blame 'em for being as He Himself made 'em. Remember the Book says, 'as one whom his mother comforteth'; and I hold that means as He understands women and their troubles better than the kindest father ever could. And He won't let His children give up things for His sake without paying them back some thirty, some sixty, and some an hundred fold; and don't you ever get thinking that He will."
"As Jemima says, yours is a comfortable doctrine, Bateson, but I am afraid you have no real foundation for your consoling belief," exclaimed Alan Tremaine, coming up and interrupting the conversation.
"Eh! but I have, sir, saving your presence; I know in Whom I have believed; and what a man has once known for certain, he can never not know again as long as he lives."