"A young woman do make it more interestin', if only 'cause you can never count for sartain on what she'll say next," Tom remarked; and the whole household had a habit of bringing any piece of news, from the birth of a calf to the last town gossip, to Meg's settle.
The 'little lady' saw all life, both her own and other people's, more vividly and picturesquely than they did; and her sympathy was genuine and quick.
"If ye live here always, I believe ye'll become a sort o' little wise woman to all the foalk hereabouts," her father-in-law said to her one day. But Meg shook her head. She was doing her best to lie on the bed she had made for herself; but she did not care to look forward.
She was recovering morally as well as physically; but she couldn't go too fast.
"Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof" is a piece of wisdom that we recognise at last, when we are tired out with the treble burden of to-day, yesterday, and to-morrow.
Barnabas worked on the farm through that August and the first half of September, and Tom was glad enough to have him.
The preacher had a wonderful faculty for turning his hands to anything; and this was, perhaps, a counter-balance to his incapacity for and dislike of "book-larning".
He was in request as veterinary surgeon and bone-setter; and Meg used to wonder that his strong clever fingers should have so delicate a touch.
She learned to depend on him herself, insensibly, in a way that she would once hardly have thought possible.
Barnabas was a born nurse, and could lift her into an easier position and slip her pillows into the right angle as no one else could.