It was therefore with genuine joy that, after a fortnight's care of this kind, a broad-faced, jolly African woman was welcomed by Mrs. Cushing to her kitchen in place of Mrs. Jones. Dinah was picked up in a distant parish, and entered upon her labors with an unctuous satisfaction and exuberance that was a positive relief after the recent tearful episode. It is true she was slow, and somewhat disorderly, but she was unfailingly good-natured, and had no dignity to be looked after; and so there was rest for a while in the Parsonage.
[CHAPTER XXVI.]
THE VICTORY.
Summer with its deep blue skies was bending over the elms of Poganuc. The daisies were white in the meadows and the tall grass was nodding its feathery sprays of blossom. The windows of the farm houses stood open, with now and then a pillow or a bolster lounging out of them, airing in the sunshine. The hens stepped hither and thither with a drowsy continuous cackle of contentment as they sunned themselves in the warm embracing air.
In the great elm that overhung the roof of Zeph Higgins's farm house was a mixed babble and confusion of sweet bird voices. An oriole from her swinging nest caroled cheerfully, and bobolinks and robins replied, and the sounds blended pleasantly with the whisper and flutter of leaves, as soft summer breezes stirred them.
But over one room in that house rested the shadow of death; there, behind the closed blinds, in darkened stillness days passed by; and watchers came at night to tend and minister; and bottles accumulated on the table; and those who came entered softly and spoke with bated breath; and the doctor was a daily visitor; and it was known that the path of the quiet patient who lay there was steadily going down to the dark river.
Every one in the neighborhood knew it: for, in the first place, everybody in that vicinity, as a matter of course, knew all about everybody else: and then, besides that, Mrs. Higgins had been not only an inoffensive, but a much esteemed and valued neighbor. Her quiet step, her gentle voice, her skillful ministry had been always at hand where there had been sickness or pain to be relieved, and now that her time was come there was a universal sympathy. Nabby's shelves were crowded with delicacies made up and sent in by one or another good wife to tempt the failing appetite. In the laborious, simple life that they were living in those days, there was small physiological knowledge, and the leading idea in most minds in relation to the care of sickness was the importance of getting the patient to eat; for this end, dainties that might endanger the health of a well person were often sent in as a tribute to the sick. Then almost every house-mother had her own favorite specific, of sovereign virtue, which she prepared and sent in to increase the army of bottles which always gathered in a sick-room. Mis' Persis, however, while graciously accepting these tributes, had her own mental reservations, and often slyly made away with the medicine in a manner that satisfied the giver and did not harm the patient. Quite often, too, Hiel Jones, returning on his afternoon course, stopped his horses at the farm-house door and descended to hand in some offering of sympathy and good will from friends who lived miles away.