One corner which she called her diningroom blossomed out with shelves, on which little blue and white cups and plates, bought at the ten-cent store, made quite a display.
She found a table and two wooden kitchen chairs at a second-hand store one day and bought the lot for two dollars, painted them gray, and she had a diningroom set. The box dressing table had long ago been decked out in pink-flowered cretonne and made a commodious harbor for her meagre wardrobe. By and by she would find a chest of drawers and paint that gray also and then she would be fixed.
The only thing that really troubled her when she stopped to think was how she was going to keep the place warm when winter came. And presently that problem, too, was solved, for Jimmie, hearing of the difficulty on one of his week-ends at home, suggested that he would build her a chimney out of the big pile of stones on the back of his father’s lot, with a fireplace of stone in the room. If that didn’t give her heat enough in the middle of winter she could get a little coal stove and set it up in one corner with a pipe into the chimney. Thereafter every Saturday when he came home he worked for several hours on the chimney, in return for which Joyce helped him with his mathematics for the next week, so that she did not feel he was making her chimney for nothing.
By the time the Vacation Bible School opened Joyce felt quite at home in the church of her choice, and was growing shyly intimate with Mrs. Lyman, the minister’s wife. They had given her the primary department, and when she arrived at the church on the opening morning of the Bible School, she found that there were forty-nine little midgets, not one of them over five years old, all ready and eager to study the Bible. Joyce, with reverent heart, set about her glorious task, praying that she might be allowed to lay the foundation of belief in Christ and the Holy Scriptures even while they were so young. She entered into her work with eagerness and was inclined to spend even more time than she was required in preparing for each day’s work, it was all such a joy to her.
But, sometimes, when she lay on the soft couch alone in her little toy house at night, and the streets were still save for the night watchman’s whistle now and again in the distance, and the electric light flickered softly over her white wall, and played tricks of design on her curtains and draperies, she thought of the days at home with Aunt Mary, and how different it all would be if her precious aunt could have been with her here. How she longed to tell her everything that had happened, and talk over each day’s doings just as she used to do. The loneliness was inexpressible, and the tears would come. Then her heart would go back to the dear home where she had spent so many years, and familiar faces would come back, and little happenings, till she felt as if she could not bear it, being away like this. And then she would remember Nan and Gene and how hard the days had been before she left, and knew that she had done the wisest thing in going, and that God had set his seal upon her choice by prospering her in her way.
But always, when she had one of these times of retrospect, she did not fail to remember the boy who had spent that happy day with her and Aunt Mary in the woods so long ago, and to feel again the pain of that night when she found him and knew that somehow he had been doing something unworthy. Then she would pray with all her heart, as indeed she prayed every night, for him, that he might be converted and get to know Jesus Christ. Indeed, this was the great prayer of her life, the one big desire that her heart had set above all other desires. And as the days went by and she prayed for it, she grew gradually to feel that somehow it would be accomplished. She might never see, might never even know on this earth that it had been done, but she had faith to believe it would be done because the Bible said:
“If ye ask anything in my name, I will do it,” and because He also said, “It is not his will that any should perish; but that all should come to repentance.”
And so she came to feel that some day her friend would find the way, and that perhaps, sometime in a heavenlier sphere, she would see him again with the smile of a reconciled God reflected in his face. And her heart was comforted.
CHAPTER XXI
Darcy Sherwood had dropped out of Meadow Brook life as completely, apparently, as if he had died.