"I love you, Aunt Roxy," said Mara, looking up with a smile.
Aunt Roxy made a strange wry face, which caused her to look harder than usual. She was choked with tenderness, and had only this uncomely way of showing it.
"Law now, Mara, I don't see how ye can; I ain't nothin' but an old burdock-bush; love ain't for me."
"Yes it is too," said Mara, drawing her down and kissing her withered cheek, "and you sha'n't call yourself an old burdock. God sees that you are beautiful, and in the resurrection everybody will see it."
"I was always homely as an owl," said Miss Roxy, unconsciously speaking out what had lain like a stone at the bottom of even her sensible heart. "I always had sense to know it, and knew my sphere. Homely folks would like to say pretty things, and to have pretty things said to them, but they never do. I made up my mind pretty early that my part in the vineyard was to have hard work and no posies."
"Well, you will have all the more in heaven; I love you dearly, and I like your looks, too. You look kind and true and good, and that's beauty in the country where we are going."
Miss Roxy sprang up quickly from the bed, and turning her back began to arrange the bottles on the table with great zeal.
"Has Moses come in yet?" said Mara.
"No, there ain't nobody seen a thing of him since he went out this morning."
"Poor boy!" said Mara, "it is too hard upon him. Aunt Roxy, please pick some roses off the bush from under the window and put in the vases; let's have the room as sweet and cheerful as we can. I hope God will let me live long enough to comfort him. It is not so very terrible, if one would only think so, to cross that river. All looks so bright to me now that I have forgotten how sorrow seemed. Poor Moses! he will have a hard struggle, but he will get the victory, too. I am very weak to-night, but to-morrow I shall feel better, and I shall sit up, and perhaps I can paint a little on that flower I was doing for him. We will not have things look sickly or deathly. There, Aunt Roxy, he has come in; I hear his step."