Tom stared at him with wide eyes a moment.
“Oh, I forgot! How could I forget! It was horrid in me, but it seems as if I could not remember anything or know anything except this one terrible feeling that is everywhere through the house. And it doesn’t seem as if it could ever be any better!”
“It will be better,” said Aleck, but Tom only shook his head. “Don’t you suppose it was just as terrible in the houses that the Lord Jesus came into long ago, because there was trouble in them?”
“I don’t know,” said Tom, hesitating a little, for he was not used to talking of such things, and didn’t know exactly where he was; “but he came to bring people back to life, then, and he doesn’t do that now.”
“No, he doesn’t, but he comes just as close and just as much to bring comfort as he did then. Suppose he should come so close and speak so tenderly that you could almost feel his heart beating against yours, wouldn’t that make it better? And if he should promise he would never go away, but would watch you even more faithfully than your father could, and help you along to make the man he hoped to see you, wouldn’t that make it better?”
“Perhaps so,” said Tom, not very clear yet that all this amounted to anything more than talking.
“I tell you there’s no mistake,” said Aleck. “There are just two or three things, it seems to me, that we have got to have before we can be happy, taking us just as we are; we want some one to love and some one to love us; we want something to do that’s worth doing, and we want our own affairs to be looked out for at the same time.”
“But I’ve got to look out for myself, now,” said poor Tom.
“I know it, Tom, and yet you haven’t, after all. If your father had been here when you went to college, didn’t you expect to send to him when you needed anything, or when you didn’t see just what ’twas best to do about anything? And wouldn’t that have left you free to go right along with your work, and interest yourself for other people, instead of all the time worrying about yourself? And can’t you do just the same with the Lord?”
“But I loved him so! I miss him so!” cried poor little Tom, breaking down altogether.