Nothing is more sweet than to be guided into this realm of thought by the precious foretaste of the love that awaited her when the end should be reached. She had gone out into the darkness expecting nothing but chilliness and gloom, but instead she was walking "by the side of still waters" and there was freshness and beauty all along the way. Still a portentous cloud was floating in the clear blue of her gilded sky, for how could she ever leave Willie to go with Mrs. Gaylord to her southern home? The weeks were rapidly passing, and when the hot summer days had all flitted away there would come a change, and her life had received so many already! "Where would the next one take her?" As she stepped in front of the mirror for a moment a smile of satisfaction stole over her young face. The new hat Mrs. Gaylord had purchased for her was very becoming, as that lady had asserted, and she thought how it would please Willie to see her looking so well. He had often lamented during the last two years that it was not in his power to procure these little luxuries, and she went on her way with a happy heart.
CHAPTER X.
THE OPENING OF A NEW LIFE.
"And whether we be afflicted, it is for our consolation and salvation, which is effectual for the enduring of the same sufferings which we also suffer; or whether we be comforted it is for our consolation; for as all hearts suffer, all have the power of consolation."
"Mrs. Gaylord had suffered, and out of the sad experience of her eventful life had come the power to administer to others." Such was Phebe's thought when on her way to the parsonage, which stood in the suburbs of the village surrounded by its fresh green lawn that had always appeared so winning to the lovers of beauty, and peaceful to the seeker after "consolation."
Mr. Ernest also knew how to bestow this gift on the weary heart. His early days had not been filled with the bright things that rightfully belong to childhood, and his after years were those of toil and strugglings. He understood well how to apply the sympathies so consoling to those whose feet are torn with the thorns by the way.
Our little pedestrian was walking away from one minister of comfort to another who was equally skilled, and it was with the greatest difficulty that she could keep her airy feet down upon the well-beaten track which ran along by the side of the broad highway to the pleasant home of the village pastor, where she hoped to find Willie and extend to him Mrs. Gaylord's pressing invitation. Mr. Ernest had told her that he usually came in the early morning or in the cool of the evening, and now the sun was fast sinking down behind the western clouds. There might be a storm approaching, for the breezes were fresh and cool, and she could but think how the ripples were sweeping around the "sand-bar" and lifting the broad lily-pads among the rushes not far out from where the pleasant row-boat was fastened to the old oak tree. Should she ever glide in the little boat over the lovely blue waters again? And then, when the stern old winter had thrown his coverlet of ice across its throbless bosom, when the lilies were all asleep in their cozy beds, what delightful rides she and Willie had enjoyed on its smooth surface as Lloyd Hunter drew them on his large comfortable sled. Was all this gone forever? She reached the door, and as no one was in sight, stopped a moment while her thoughts went on.