Mistress Dorothy clasped my hand closer in her own as he went on, and looked down to hide, I think, the tears that were in her eyes.
'And so she died,' ended Master Caleb, 'and the boy was left to grow up as best he could.'
There was something in his voice that made me look up at him—something I could not understand.
Mistress Dorothy must have known better what he meant, for she answered softly—
'And yet it was best so.'
Master Caleb bowed his head gravely. 'No doubt you are right, Mistress Dorothy. Only it has often struck me as a strange answer to the promise that whoever gives a cup of water shall in no wise lose his reward. The boy did his best, and where is his reward?'
'We do not know yet,' she said, 'but it will surely come. Master Caleb, you are a schoolmaster; do you always give your best rewards in schooltime? Don't you often keep them to the end, when your scholars are leaving school to go home? Perhaps Willie will wait for his reward even until then.'
'You are speaking of the next world, Mistress Dorothy,' he said.
'Yes,' and she turned to me. 'You will be content to wait, Willie?'
I answered 'Yes' then, because I thought she expected it of me.