“Oh, there’s dear Sister Watt,” cried Miss Tremont, and she rose precipitately, and crossing the aisle sat down beside a careworn anxious-eyed woman who also wore the white ribbon.
“Come over by me until Miss Tremont comes back,” said Miss Beale, with her brilliant smile. “Tell me, don’t you love her already? Oh, you have no idea how good she is. She is heart and soul in her work, and just lives for the Lord. She sometimes visits twenty poor families a week, besides her Temperance class, her sewing school, her Bible Readings, her Bible class, and all the religious societies, of which she is the most active worker. She is also the Mariaville agent for the Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Children, and trustee of the Bible Society. You should hear her pray. I have heard all the great revivalists, but I have never heard anything like Miss Tremont’s prayers. How I envy you living with her! You’ll hear her twice a day, and sometimes oftener. She has a nice house on the outskirts of Mariaville. Her father left it to her twenty years ago, and she dedicated it to the Lord at once. It is headquarters for church meetings of all sorts. She has a Bible reading one afternoon a week. Any one can go, even a servant, for Miss Tremont, like all true followers of the Lord, is humble.”
Patience reflected that she had never seen any one look less humble than Miss Beale. In spite of her old frock she conveyed with unmistakable if unconscious emphasis that she possessed wealth and full knowledge of its power.
“You look so happy,” Patience said, her curiosity regarding Miss Tremont blunted for the present. “Are you?”
“Happy? Of course I am. I’ve never known an unhappy moment in my life. When my dear parents died, I only envied them. And have I not perfect health? Is not every moment of my time occupied?—why, I only sleep six hours out of the twenty-four. And Him. Do I not work for Him, and is He not always with me?”
“They are so funny about God,” thought Patience. “She talks as if He were her beau; and Miss Tremont as if He were her old man she’d been jogging along with for forty years or so.—Do you live alone?” she asked.
“Yes—that is, I board.”
“And don’t you ever feel lonesome?”
“Never. Is not He always with me?” Her strong brown face was suddenly illuminated. “Is He not my lover? Is He not always at my side, encouraging me and whispering of His love, night and day? Why, I can almost hear His voice, feel His hand. How could I be lonesome even on a desert island with no work to do?”
Patience gasped. The extraordinary simplicity of this woman of fifty fascinated her whom life and heredity had made so complex. But she moved restlessly, and felt an impulse to thrust out her legs and arms. She had a sensation of being swamped in religion.