"You are greatly changed since I saw you last, Miss Blake," he said gravely. "Your spirit was gentler, your mind was more religiously inclined. I found you——"
"You didn't find me pestered t' death," said Harriet briefly, somewhat mollified by his "Miss Blake."
"I was led to believe that you were suffering, that you were in trouble," hazarded the pastor.
Never in his somewhat self-sufficient life had he felt such difficulty in giving spiritual advice. Even to his thick-skinned personality it was deeply evident that this sharp-tongued little woman was in great trouble. Ordinarily, a certain facility for quotation and application made him a confident speaker, but to-day he felt impeded, held back by the self-control and patience of his listener. For he saw that she was patient; that she could say much more if she chose; that she was, beneath all her sharpness, alarmed and worried.
His somewhat perplexed air, his evident memory of her earlier estate, his startled recognition of her changed appearance had the effect that nothing else could have had. Her hands twisted nervously in her lap, her mouth twitched, she dropped her eyes, and opened her lips once or twice without speaking. Suddenly, with a little gasp, she began:
"If you think I don't care, you're mistaken. I'm just about sick. I been a Christian and a good believer all my life, and now I ain't. Maybe I don't care about that? They just pester me t' death, and Mis' Markham, she can't stop 'em. They'll send me back to Sarah's, that's my niece, and they can't keep me there. They ain't good to me there, and I get fever 'n ague every day o' my life there. But I can't help it—I can't help it! I got ter go!"
Some good angel held Mr. Freeland silent, and after a moment she went on.
"I'm sixty-two years old, and I never was anything but a churchgoer an' a believer. Two weeks ago to-day I set in this chair an' looked out the winder, an' I see the birds pickin' in the front yard."
He followed her eyes and watched for a moment the poor house pigeons preening and posing in the noon sun. They whitened the summer grass, and their clucking and cooing formed the undertone of the old woman's confession.
"I see 'em there, and I got thinkin' about the dove in my Bible an' the Holy Ghost. And it just come into my mind like a shot—what's the good of it? What'd it ever done for me? What's the sense of a bird, anyhow? An' I worked over it, and I worried over it, an' I got to talkin' with Mis' Sheldon about it while we was workin' together, and she just made me hate it more. She said I'd go to hell—me, a believer for sixty-two years! An' I've cried till I can't cry any more, an' I've prayed till I'm tired of prayin', and nothin' happens to me exceptin' I hate it more. An' if they send me back to Sarah's I'll die, that's the truth. But I'll have t' go—I'll have t' go!"