The sempstress carried back the child up the steep staircase, laid her tenderly on her bed, and hurried away to her own attic.
In her absence strange things had happened. The room was swept and tidy, the flowers were watered, and the piece of work she had left half done was lying finished on the broad window seat. The poor woman looked round her in astonishment. She went downstairs to enquire if any neighbours had prepared this surprise for her, but they only stared at her, and told her "she must have left her wits in the Market Place," and that "that was what came of leaving your own duties to look after other people's."
The sempstress did not listen to their taunts, for a song of joy was welling up in her heart—a song so sweet and true, it might have been the echo of that sung by the angels. Never had life seemed so beautiful to her. The ill looks of the neighbours appeared to her to be smiles of kindness and love; their hard speeches sounded soft and altered; the steep stairs to her room were not so steep, her attic not so bare and desolate. Life was no longer lonely, for the song in her heart brought her all the happiness she had ever hoped for.
The sick child, too, found the same wonderful change in all that surrounded her. The aunt with whom she lived, who had always been so careless and unloving, now seemed to the child to be kind and gentle. Her aching back was less painful, her thoughts as she lay on her bed were bright and happy. The Angel's message had brought sunshine to the lives of the only two who could read and understand it.
In time the sick child went to live with the sempstress, and their love for each other grew and strengthened, and overflowed in a thousand little acts of kindness to all who came near them. Their room was filled with brightness. The birds flew to perch on the window-sill and sing in the early mornings; flowers bloomed in the cracks of the old stonework; the sempstress sang as she worked, and whenever she left her sewing to carry the child out into the Market Place to breathe the fresh air she would find her work finished when she returned.
"It was a happy day that we read the message in the Market Place," she said to the sick child; "indeed we have been rewarded generously."