“You have been happy here, then, upon the whole?”
“Yes; upon the whole,” repeated she, thoughtfully; “but it wasna that I was thinking about.”
“Christie, do you know I think you have changed very much since you used to come and see my mother? You have changed; and yet you are the very same: there’s a paradox for you, as Peter O’Neil would say.”
His words were light, but there was a meaning in his grave smile that made Christie’s heart leap; and her answer was at first a startled look, and then a sudden gush of happy tears. Then came good John Nesbitt’s voice entreating a blessing on “his little sister in Christ”; and this made them flow the faster. But, oh, they were such happy, happy tears! and very happy was the hour that followed.
Now and then there comes an hour, in the intercourse of friends with each other, which reveals to each more of the inner and spiritual life of the other than years of common intercourse could do; and this was such an hour. I cannot tell all that was said. The words might seem to many a reader tame and common-place enough, but many of them Christie never forgot while she lived, and many of them John Nesbitt will not cease to remember to his dying day.
Christie had no thought of showing him all that was in her heart. She did not think that the friend who was listening so quietly to all the little details of her life among strangers—her home-sickness, her fears and weariness, her love and care for the children and their mother—was all the time thanking God in his heart for all the way by which this little lamb had been led to take refuge in the fold. She knew by the words he spoke, before he rose to go, that he was much-moved. They came back to her many a time afterwards, brightening the sad days, and comforting her when she was in sorrow. They helped her to the cheerful bearing of a disappointment near at hand.
As for John, he was far from thinking the day lost that he had devoted to the pleasure of Christie. If in the morning the hope of possessing at once the much-desired books had been given up with a sigh, it was the sigh, and not the sacrifice, that was regretted now. With a sense of refreshment unspeakable there came to his remembrance the Saviour’s promise that the giving of a cup of cold water to one of His little ones should have its reward. To have supported those weary feet, if ever so little, in the way, to have encouraged the faint heart or brightened the hope of this humble child, was no unworthy work in the view of one whose supreme desire it was to glorify Him who came from heaven to earth to speak of hope to the poor and lowly. Nor was this all. He was learning, from the new and sweet experiences which the child was so unconsciously revealing to him, a lesson of patient trustfulness, of humble dependence, which a whole library of learned books might have failed to teach him.
The shadows were growing long before they rose to go.
“You’ll be very tired to-morrow, I’m afraid,” said John, as they went slowly down the broad, steep way that leads from the cemetery. “I’m afraid your holiday will do you little good.”
“It has done me good already. I’m not afraid,” said Christie, cheerfully. “Only I’m sure I shall think of twenty things I want to ask you about when you are fairly gone.”