Alice Mount looked back, and saw the small pair still toiling slowly on, the big jar between them. It would not have been a large jar for her to carry, but it was large and heavy too for such little things as these.
“However will they get home!” said she. “Nobody to look after them but ‘God and Father’!”
The moment she had said it, her heart smote her. Was that not enough? If the Lord cared for these little ones, did it matter who was against them? How many unseen angels might there be on that road, watching over the safety of the children, and of that homely jar of meal for their sakes? It was not the first time that angels had attended to springs of water and cakes baken on the coals. No angel would dream of stopping to think whether such work degraded him. It is only men who stoop low enough for that. The highest work possible to men or angels is just doing the will of God: and God was the Father of these little ones.
“What is their Father?” asked Alice Mount.
“Johnson? Oh, he is a labouring man—a youngish man, only four-and-thirty: his mistress died a matter of six months back, and truly I know not how those bits of children have done since.”
“They have had ‘God and Father,’” said Alice “Well, I’ve no doubt he’s a good father,” answered Margaret. “John Johnson is as good a man as ever stepped, I’ll say that for him: and so was Helen a rare good woman. I knew her well when we were maids together. Those children have been well fetched up, take my word for it.”
“It must have been a sad matter to lose such a wife,” said Alice.
“Well, what think you?” answered Margaret, dropping her voice. “Agnes Love told me—Jack Love’s wife, that dwells on the Heath—you’ll maybe know her?”
“Ay, I know her, though not well.”
“I’ve known her ever since she was a yard long. Well, she told me, the even it happed came Jack Johnson to their house, and when she oped the door, she was fair feared of him, he looked so strange—his face all white, and such a glitter of his eyes—she marvelled what had taken him. And says he, ‘Agnes, my Helen’s gone.’ ‘Gone? oh dear!’ says she. ‘Ay, she’s gone, thank God!’ says he. Well, Agnes thought this right strange talk, and says she, ‘Jack Johnson, what can you mean? Never was a better woman than your Helen, and you thanking God you’ve lost her!’ ‘Nay, Agnes, could you think that?’ says he. ‘I’m thanking God because now I shall never see her stand up on the waste by Lexden Road,’ says he. ‘She’s safe from that anguish for evermore!’ And you know what that meant.”