They stood together on the doorstep. A distant bell called to evening prayer-meeting; the restless murmur of the river and the whisper of the wind in the pines broke the twilight stillness. The long, quiet day together, part of it spent by the sick child’s bedside, had brought the two strangers curiously near to each other.
“The house hasn’t seemed so sweet and fresh since my mother died,” he went on, as he dropped her hand, “and I haven’t had so many flowers and green things in it since I lost my eyesight.”
“Was it long ago?”
“Ten years. Is that long?”
“Long to bear a burden.”
“I hope you know little of burden-bearing?”
“I know little else.”
“I might have guessed it from the alacrity with which you took up Davy’s and mine. You must be very happy to have the power to make things straight and sunny and wholesome; to breathe your strength into helplessness such as mine. I thank you, and I envy you. Good-night.”
Lyddy turned on her heel without a word; her mind was beyond and above words. The sky seemed to have descended upon, enveloped her, caught her up into its heaven, as she rose into unaccustomed heights of feeling, like Elijah in his chariot of fire. She very happy! She with power—power to make things straight and sunny and wholesome! She able to breathe strength into helplessness, even a consecrated, God-smitten helplessness like his! She not only to be thanked, but envied!
Her house seemed strange to her that night. She went to bed in the dark, dreading even the light of a candle; and before she turned down her counterpane she flung herself on her knees, and poured out her soul in a prayer that had been growing, waiting, and waited for, perhaps, for years: