“Ay!” answered Daniel. “I don’t think the minister could have told me plainer. Why, Jessica, suppose the Lord had been living here, and your mother had come to his door, wouldn’t he have cared for her, and grieved over her, and done everything he could to prevent her going on in sin? Well, dear, it seems to me it wouldn’t be altogether right to take her to live with us all at once, because you are a young girl and ought not to see such ways, and I might get angry with her; but I’ll hire a room for her somewhere, that shall be always kept for her, and whenever she comes to it there will be a bed, and a meal for her; and we’ll be very kind to her, and see if by any means we can help to make her good.”
Jessica had dropped her sewing and drawn near to Daniel; and now she flung her arms round his neck, and hid her face upon his breast, crying.
“Why, now, now, my dear!” said Daniel, “what ails you, Jessica? Wouldn’t the Lord Jesus have made a plan something like that? Come, come; we’ll pray to him to make her a good woman, and then—who knows?—she may come here to live with us.”
“She’s my own mother, you know,” sobbed Jessica, as if these words alone were thoughts in her heart.
“Yes!” answered Daniel, “and we must do our best for her. Jessica, I know now that I love God more than aught else in this world or the next.”
It was a knowledge worth more than all the riches of earth; and as Daniel sat in his chimney-corner he could hardly realize his own happiness. To be sure that he loved God supremely, and to have the witness in himself that he did so! He felt as if he could take all the world of lost and ruined sinners to his heart, and, like Christ himself, lay down his life for them. There was only one shadow, if it could be called a shadow, upon his joy unspeakable, and full of comfort—it was that he could not gladden the heart of the minister by telling him of this change in his nature.
The next day was a very busy one for Daniel; for besides his ordinary duties he charged himself with finding a suitable place for Jessica’s mother. He met with a room at last in the dwelling of a poor widow, who was glad to let him have it on condition that he paid the rent of the house.
He and Jessica bought a bed and a chair and a table, and put everything in readiness for their expected visitor. Scanty as was the furniture, it was a warm and certain shelter for the poor vagrant, who spent half her nights shivering under archways or in unfinished buildings; and never had Daniel felt so pure a gratification as when he gave a last look at the room, and taking Jessica by the hand went back to his own home, no longer afraid of meeting the woman on his threshold.