"We'll off-saddle them for an hour or two if we may," he said, "and we've counted on Woodlands hospitality to give us something to eat."
"But of course," cried Jessie joyously. "I told mother that the feeling in my bones meant something good was to happen to-day, but I never thought of anything half so good as this."
Then came the farmer and his wife to welcome their guests. The family dinner was over and the boys dispersed about the farm, but a meal of sorts should be ready in a brace of shakes, and the "nipper" looked ready for it, which the nipper was, for the ride had given him a hearty appetite. And whilst Jessie flitted to and fro in hospitable preparation, Tom noticed the stamp of refinement which illness had left upon her, but there was something more than refinement written on her face—a certain radiance which he accepted as the outward manifestation of an inward grace, a heart at peace with God and all the world.
"You found the right work for the girl," said the farmer, following the direction of Tom's eyes. "She just dotes on her teaching, and gets on well with it. We shall have her up here some day, I expect, setting us all to rights as school-teacher at Wylmington."
"Not yet, father," laughed Jessie, shaking her finger at him. "I want to know ever so much more before I try for a school of my own."
"And will it be a school in the bush when that time comes?" Tom asked. "Time was when you did not like the Bush much."
"I don't know; being away from them all makes you long to be back, though a town school, where I am now, teaches you a lot about discipline and such things, but sometimes now I think I'll get back to the country, where you can get to know all your children and love them and have care of them out of school as well as in it. And one can do something for the church in these country places. I'm learning to play the harmonium, and I could play perhaps on Sundays when we have service. There's no one to do it now, not even anyone who can lead the singing. Don't you remember how you said once that it was a clergyman's work to set the machinery in a place going, the spiritual machinery, and the work of the people to keep it alive and active?"
"Did I say that? You can't expect me to remember all I said four years ago."
"But I remember, because you were the first one to talk to me about the church's order. You said most people left their religion to chance and odd times, and we ought to be as careful over it as over our other work."
"You were an attentive pupil, it seems," said Tom, smiling at her.