“I’m glad it’s near the end of October now,” the small girl said with a little sigh, “for I just couldn’t wait more’n two weeks to give that dress to Carol.”
Then, as there was no more basting that she could do, Dixie wandered about the pleasant, home-like room, reading the titles on the books that were everywhere in evidence. Suddenly she paused before a photograph. “Why, Miss Bayley,” she exclaimed, “the boy in this picture looks almost ’zactly like you.”
“He is my brother, dear, two years younger than I am,” the girl-teacher replied, looking up with a smile.
“Oh, I remember now, you did tell me you had a brother Tim. Is he coming West some time to see you, Miss Bayley?”
There was a sudden shadow on the lovely face that bent over the blue silk. “I’m afraid Tim doesn’t care to find me,” she said. “I haven’t heard from him in over a year. I don’t even know where he is. Brother and I were left orphans when I was eight and he six. That was just twelve years ago. Although he is but eighteen, he is a giant of a chap, and would pass for twenty-one. Our guardian put me in a fashionable boarding-school in New York, and placed Tim in a military academy in the South. After that we saw very little of each other, but we did write, that is, I wrote every week and my brother replied now and then, but over a year ago his letters ceased coming, and so, when I graduated and was ready to do what I liked, I went South and visited the academy, only to find that my brother was not there. He had found military discipline too severe, his room-mate told me, and had disappeared. No one knew where he went, but his pal believed that he had gone to sea. Tim had said to him, ‘Tell Sis that I’ll turn up in three years, if not sooner.’ With Tim gone, I had no one in all the world, Dixie, for whom I really cared, and no one cared for me. I was so weary of the noise and artificial life of New York City, and I didn’t want to open up our father’s home on Riverside Drive without Tim, so I left it all and came West to seek—to seek— Oh, Dixie, dear, I don’t know what I came to seek, but I do know what I found.” With a little half-sob, the girl-teacher held out both arms, and Dixie went to her.
“I found some one to love, and some one to love me.” Then, hastily wiping her eyes, Miss Bayley smilingly declared, “It never would do to get a little salty spot on this lovely blue silk.” Then, springing up, she added gayly, “Come now, Miss Midget, you and I are going to have four-o’clock chocolate.”
During the next hour Dixie thought she had never known her beloved teacher to be so light-hearted and merry, but when the small girl had gone down the cañon trail Josephine Bayley went to her screened-in porch bedroom, and, stretching out her arms toward the sky that was such a deep blue over the mountains, she said, “O Thou who holdest the lands and the seas, take care of my brother, Tim.” Then, remembering the child’s faith in prayer, she added, “And bring him to me soon.”
There was peace in the heart of the girl-teacher as she turned back into the little log cabin, for, once again, she had faith in prayer.
“And a little child shall lead them,” she thought as she prepared her evening meal.