“Good morning!” said the preacher, feeling curiously embarrassed under the quiet, straightforward gaze of the island girl. “I saw you at the service this morning; but I missed you when it was over, and your friend here guided me to you.” She turned to look at Joe, but he had disappeared.
“Yes,” said Isla Heron, “I was there. I was coming to look for you, too. I wanted to ask you if something you said was true.”
The preacher smiled. “I hope I said nothing that was untrue,” she said.
Isla looked up with a startled glance. “Oh, yes!” she said. “Things that are not true here, anyhow. I don’t know how it may be over on the main. But—what I wanted to ask you—you read something from the Bible,—‘The tongue of the dumb shall sing.’ What did you mean by that?”
The preacher repeated, slowly, that she might have time to think a little.
“‘Then shall the lame man leap as a hart, and the tongue of the dumb sing.’ Yes, that is a beautiful passage; you will find it in Isaiah, the thirty-fifth chapter.”
“But is it true?” Isla persisted. “Did they do it then, or can they do it now?”
“I do not understand you,” the preacher said, gently. “It is a prophecy of the flourishing of Christ’s kingdom.”
“Will he make dumb people speak? that is all I want to know,” said Isla. “My little brother is dumb, and I would do anything in the world to make him speak. If that is true, tell me how it is done.”