Chapter Six.
Wherein Jenny makes her last mistake.
“I marvel Tom and Jenny Lavender doesn’t make it up,” said Persis Fenton, as she laid the white cloth for supper on her little table. “Here’s Jenny got a fine sensible young woman, with God’s grace in her heart (more than ever I looked for), and Tom goes on living in that cottage all by his self, and never so much as casts an eye towards her—and that fond of her as he’d used to be, afore, too! Tony, man, don’t you think it’s a bit queer?”
“I think,” said old Anthony, looking up from his big Bible, which he was reading by the fireside, “I think, Persis, we’d best leave the Lord to govern His own world. He hasn’t forgot that Tom’s in it, I reckon, nor Jenny neither.”
“Well, no—but one’d like to help a bit,” said Persis, lifting off the pan to dish up her green pudding, which was made of suet and bread-crumbs, marigolds and spinach, eggs and spice.
“Folks as thinks they’re helping sometimes hinders,” replied Anthony, quietly taking off his great horn spectacles, and putting them away in the case.
“Tell you what, Tony, I hate to see anything wasted,” resumed Persis, after grace had been said. “If there’s only an end of thread over, I can’t abear to cast it away; I wind it on an old bobbin, thinking it’ll come in some time.”
“The Lord never wastes nothing, wife,” was Anthony’s answer. “See how He grows plants in void places, and clothes the very ruins with greenery. It’s always safe to trust Him with a man’s life.”