Christie Redfern's Troubles

by Margaret M. Robertson

God has many ways in which He comforts His children. Leaning her tired head on the low window-sill, Christie slept and dreamed, and in her dream, peace came to her spirit. A strange, soft light spread around her, like the gleam she had once seen fall on the sea in the early morning. Only the sea seemed near now, and there were strange, bright forms flitting over it, and on the other side, far-away yet near, her mother beckoned to her. She knew it was her mother. Her smile was the very same, and the loving look in her eyes. But, oh, she had grown so beautiful! Gazing and stretching her arms towards her, she seemed conscious of a sweet and awful Presence, before which the shining sea and the bright forms, and even her mother’s glorified face, vanished.

have called thee by thy name. Thou art Mine.

I go to prepare a place for you.

Whether the words were spoken, or whether she read them as in a book, or whether it was only a remembrance of what she knew to be true, she could not tell, but it brought peace ineffable.

She woke at the touch of the nurse, with a start and a sigh of disappointment. But there was more than patience in the smile with which she answered her kind chiding; and the woman, looking in her face, kept silent, feeling vaguely that words of encouragement, such as she spoke often, as mere words of course, to patients under her care, were not needed here.

So when Christie rose to a new day in this strange, sad place of suffering, it was with an earnest desire to be contented and hopeful during the few weeks she expected to spend in it. It was by no means so difficult a matter as she at first supposed. She was not confined to her room, but was permitted at stated times to go with the nurse into the public wards; and though the sights she saw there saddened her many a time, she was happy in having an opportunity of now and then doing a kindness to some poor sufferer among them. Sometimes it was to read a chapter in the Bible, or a page or two in some book left by a visitor; sometimes she had the courage to speak a word in season to the weary; once or twice she wrote a letter for some patient who could not write for herself. All this did her good; and the sight she had of the sufferings of others did; much to make her patient in bearing her own.

Then, too, she could work; and Mrs Seaton had kindly supplied her with some of the pretty materials for fancy work which Effie and Gertrude had taught her. In this way many an hour, which would otherwise have been very tedious, passed away pleasantly and even quickly. She had books too; and once, during the first month of her stay, Mrs Seaton visited her, and several times proved her kind remembrance of her by sending her some little gift—as a bunch of flowers, a book, or some little delicacy to tempt her variable appetite. Martha came almost every Sabbath, and from her she heard of the little lads and sometimes of Miss Gertrude. So the first few weeks passed far more pleasantly and rapidly than she had thought possible.

When the doctor decided that she must not wait to hear from her sister before placing herself under surgical care in the hospital, Christie intended to write immediately to tell her of her changed prospects, but when she thought about it again she hesitated.

“It will only be for a little while,” she said. “I will wait for a week or two at least. A month, or even six weeks, will soon pass; and if I can write and tell them I am almost well again, it will not be half the vexation to Effie and the others to know that I am here. I will wait a little while at least.”

She waited a month and then wrote—not that she was nearly well again, but hopefully, more hopefully than she felt, for she could not bear that Effie and the rest at home should be made unhappy about her. So she did not tell them that she had been there a whole month, and that she was no better, but rather worse. She told them how kind everybody was to her, and how the doctor gave her good hopes of soon being as well as ever and able to get home again.