God loved her. This was what Agnes had heard. God, who could do everything, who had all the universe at His command, loved her, the poor orphan, the unlettered drudge; penniless, despised, unattractive—God loved her, just as she was. She drank in the glad tidings, as a parched soil drinks the rain.
But this was not all. God wanted her to love Him. He sought for her love, He cared for it. Amid all the hearts laid at His feet, He would miss hers if she did not give it. The thought came upon her like a new revelation from Heaven, direct to herself.
The preacher at the Cross that day was a Black Friar—a tall spare man, whom some might call gaunt and ungainly; a man of quick intelligence and radiant eyes, of earnest gesture and burning words. No idle monastic reveller this, but a man of one object, of one idea, full of zeal and determination. His years were a little over forty, and his name was John Laurence. But of himself Agnes thought very little; her whole soul was concentrated upon the message which he had brought her from God. God loved her! Since her mother died, she had been unloved. God loved her! And she had never asked Him for His love—she had never loved Him.
It was just the blessed fact itself which filled the heart, and mind, and soul of Agnes Stone. As to how it had come about, she had very little idea. She had not heard enough of the Friar’s sermon to win any clear notion on that point; it was enough for her that it was so.
It never occurred to her to doubt the fact, and demand vouchers. It never occurred to her to suppose that her own hard lot was any contradiction to the theory. And it never occurred to her to imagine, as some do, that God’s love led to no result; that He could love, and not care; that He could love, and not be ready to save. Human love was better than that. The mother who, alone of all creatures, so far as she knew, had ever loved Agnes Stone, had shown her love by always caring, by always shielding from danger where it lay in her power. And surely the Fountain could be no weaker than the stream; the love of a weak, fallen, fallible human creature must be less, not more, than the love of Him who is, and who was, and who is to come; who is the same yesterday, and to-day, and for ever.
“Hie thee down this minute, thou good-for-nothing hussy!” thundered the voice of Mistress Winter up the garret stairs, as Agnes was hastily resuming her working garb. “I’ll warrant thou didst ne’er set the foul clothes a-soaking as I bade thee ere thou wentest forth to take thy pleasure, and left me a-slaving hither! Get thee to thy work, baggage! Thou art worth but one half as many pence as there be shillings in a groat! (A fourpenny-piece.) I’ll learn thee to gad hearing of sermons!”
“I set the clothes a-soaking ere I went forth, Mistress,” said Agnes, coming quickly down stairs, and setting to work on the first thing she saw to need doing.
“Marry come up!” ejaculated Mistress Winter, looking at her. “Good lack! hast met with a fortune dropped from the clouds, that thou art all of a grin o’ mirth?”
“I met with nought save that I went for,” replied the girl quietly. But it struck her that the comparison of “a fortune dropped from the clouds” was a singularly happy one.
“Lack-a-daisy!” cried Dorothy. “The Friar must have told some merry tale belike. Prithee, give us the same, Agnes.”