Poor Madge!—she took the best symbol she had wit for.
“Ay, my lass, it’ll be better nor aught down here,” saith old Isaac. “Plum-porridge and feather beds’ll be nought to what they’ve getten up yonder.—You see, Mistress Joyce, we mun tell her by what she knows, poor maid!”
“Ay, thou sayest well, Isaac,” Aunt Joyce made reply. “Madge, thy mother’s up yonder.”
“I know!” she saith, a-smiling. “She’ll come to th’ gate when I knock. He’ll sure send her to meet me. She’ll know ’tis me, ye ken. It’d never do if some other maid gave my name, and got let in by mistake for me. He’ll send somebody as knows me to see I get in right. Don’t ye see, that’s why we keep a-going one at once? Somebody mun be always there that’ll ken th’ new ones.”
“I reckon the Lord will ken them, Madge,” saith Aunt Joyce.
“Oh ay, He’ll ken ’em, sure enough,” saith Madge. “But then, ye see, they’d feel lonely like if they waited to see any body they knew till they got right up to th’ fur end: and th’ angels ’d be stoppin’ ’em and wanting to make sure all were right. That wouldn’t be pleasant. So He’ll send one o’ them as knows ’em, and then th’ angels ’ll be satisfied, and not be stoppin’ of ’em.”
Aunt Joyce did not smile at poor Madge’s queer notions. She saith at times that God Himself teaches them that men cannot teach. And at after, quoth she, that it were but Madge her way of saying, “He careth for you.”
“Dost thou think she is going, Isaac?” saith Aunt Joyce. For old Isaac is an herb-gatherer, or were while he could; and he wist a deal of physic.
“Now, Gaffer, thou’lt never say nay!” cries Madge faintly, as though it should trouble her sore if he thought she would live through it.
“I’ll say nought o’ th’ sort, Madge,” said Isaac. “Ay, Mistress Joyce. She’s been coming to the Lord this ever so long: and now, I take it, she’s going to Him.”