To drop the subject or the strain;
To twine around, with winning art,
And gently steal away the heart.”
Anon.
THE blacksmith’s daughter received her father’s description of the proceedings at the quarterly meeting with much enjoyment, and true to her taste for seeking out the neediest, emphatically endorsed the idea of making evangelical war on Midden Harbour. Pondering how she could help forward this worthy scheme, she made her way, one evening, to pay a visit to the ailing wife of Piggy Morris. Lucy’s piety was a very cheerful and attractive type. Those who think that religion must necessarily tinge the life with melancholy, and wrap its possessor in a veil of gloom, would have felt inclined to question the genuineness of her profession, and to doubt as to whether she had “the root of the matter” within her. Her bright eyes were seldom dim with other tears than those of sympathy and joy; her smiles were never long absent from her face; her full, free, musical ripple of laughter was perfectly contagious, and her manifold charms of form and feature were brightened and intensified by the Christian faith and joy that dwelt within. No one could be long in Lucy’s company before any “megrims” of their own began to pass away; and no sooner did she enter the home of sickness and of sorrow, than the gloom began insensibly to lift, and the inmates were led to look at matters from their brighter side. This power of radiating happiness is of wondrous value, and ought to be cultivated, as it may, by all who keep the heart-fires of grace brightly burning, from whence the subtle and potent blessings are evolved. This cheering quality made Lucy’s visits unspeakably precious to such a despondent invalid as Mrs. Morris. To Mary Morris they were as bright spots in a very cloudy sky, and even Piggy Morris himself, glum and crusty as he was, was fain to declare his pleasure at her visits, and to give her a welcome such as greeted no visitor besides.
LUCY BLYTH.—[Page 140].
“Well, Mrs. Morris, how are you to-day?” said Lucy to the ailing woman, who sat, propped up with pillows, in an old arm-chair by the fireside. “Why, I declare, you look ever so much better and brighter than when I was here last. Some of these fine days we shall be having you out of doors again, and you and Mary will be having a cup of tea with me at the Forge.”
Mrs. Morris’s thin and sallow face gleamed with satisfaction at the sight of her welcome guest; but she shook her head as one who had made up her mind to say “good-bye” to hope, and accept the inevitable.