The darkness of the way;
Sing at your work, though sorrow
Its lengthened shadow cast;
Joy cometh with the morrow,
And soon the night is past.”
Presently she came in with a generous cup of coffee and a plate of buttered toast on a battered little black Japan waiter, the whole covered with a clean, white, well darned old napkin.
She sank down on the solitary chair beside the bed, and holding the waiter of breakfast in her lap, said:
“Now sit up and take this, while I get a good look at you.”
Again, with a feeble smile, Harcourt obeyed her, took the offered cup from her hand, and while he eagerly quaffed the fragrant coffee, which he found so grateful to his parched throat and fainting frame, she regarded him with the eyes of experience.
“Yes, young man,” she said gravely and tenderly, “you have seen trouble—plenty of trouble, but that is the lot of human beings. ‘Man is born to trouble as the sparks to fly upward.’ Ah! and if we in trouble go upward in spirit to Him who can turn our trouble to our greatest good, then it will be well with us. Everything is good that sends us to Him. But there, I am not going to preach to you. I am not wise enough nor good enough to do that. I only wanted to drop that one little hint.”