The preacher looked at her very tenderly.
“Let us sit down here, my dear,” she said; “and tell me about your little brother.”
They sat down on a warm brown stone, and Isla told the story of her little Jacob; of her father’s death two years before, and of her mother’s fading away through the year, and following him before another spring came.
“So now there are just the two of us,” she said. “Just me and my little Jacob. And if I could make him hear and speak, I would be willing to die myself.”
“He can never hear!” the preacher said. “These are not the days of miracles, and we have no assurance that we may look for them, though signs and wonders are all about us. But truly a wonder has been wrought in these very days; and it may be that the child can be taught to speak, and to read by the lips what others say to him.”
She told Isla, in a few words, of the new teaching of the deaf, and the girl listened with her whole soul.
“Where is it done?” she asked. “Tell me the name of the place!”
The preacher named Bellton as the nearest city where such teaching could be had. “Have you friends there?” she asked.
Isla’s startled eyes gave her answer. “Bellton!” she said. “That was a place Giles showed me on the sand, where the people lived in prisons, and liked it, and turned white for want of sun. I should have to go there, should I, and take my little Jacob? Could a person live there, do you think, who was not used to it?”