I didn’t know whether the warm sun of his love could melt the snow and frozen hail or not––the sun duz melt such things––and I knew love wuz the greatest thing in the world. Well, I had to leave the event to Providence, and wuz willin’ to; but yet, after a woman duz leave things to the Most High to do, she loves to put in her oar and help things along; mebby that is the way of Providence––who knows? But ’tennyrate I gin another blind hint to her before we left the conversation.
Sez I, “Ernest White is doin’ the Lord’s work if ever a man did, and I can’t think it is the Lord’s will that whilst he’s doin’ it he ort to eat such bread as he has to––milk emtin’s and sour at that, to say nothin’ of fried stuff that a anaconda couldn’t digest. He deserves a sweet, love-guarded 146 home, and to be tended to by a woman that he loves––one who could inspire him and help him on in the heavenly way he’s treading alone and lonesome.” Her cheeks did turn pink then, and her eyes looked like deep blue pools in which stars wuz shinin’, but she didn’t say anything, and Robert Strong resoomed his talk with her about her hospital work. And before she left he gin her a big check to use for her patients; I don’t know exactly how big it wuz, but it went up into the hundreds, anyway; and Dorothy gin her one, too, for I see her write it; Miss Meechim gin her her blessin’ and more’n a dozen tracts, which mebby will set well on the patients, if administered cautious. I myself gin her the receipt for the best mustard poultice that ever drawed, and two pairs of clouded blue-and-white wool socks I had knit on the way, and though it wuz a warm country she said they would come handy when her patients had chills.
There wuz two young American girls at the hotel, and they happened to come into the parlor while we wuz talkin’ and they sent a big present to the hospital. I guess they wuz real well off and good dispositioned. They wuz travellin’ alone and seemed to be havin’ a real good time. One on ’em wuz sunthin’ of a invalid, but wuz outdoors all day, I spoze tryin’ to git well. They minded their own bizness and didn’t do any hurt so fur as I could see, but Elder Wessel couldn’t bear ’em. Sez he to me one day:
“I spoze they represent the new young woman?”
He said it real skornful, and Arvilly, who wuz present, took him up real snappish. “Well, what of it? What have they done?” If that poor man had said that black wuz black and white wuz white, Arvilly would found fault with it.
“I don’t object to what they have done,” sez he, “so much as to what they are. Young American women know too much.” And Arvilly sez with a meanin’ glance at him, “That is sunthin’ that everybody don’t have to stand.”
She might just as well have called him a fool, her axent wuz such. Arvilly is too hash. Sez he: “Now my Lucia is 147 different. She knows nothing about sin and wickedness, and I got this position for her, so that as soon as she left the convent she was placed directly in the care of this good woman and her little innocent child. What does she know of sin or sorrow, or worldliness or vanity?”
“Or danger?” sez I meanin’ly. “If she always has some one at her side to guard her, her perfect ignorance and innocence is a charm, but how would it be in the hour of danger and temptation? Why should anybody fear being burned if they had no knowledge of fire?”
“Oh,” sez he, “her divine innocence is her safeguard. Evil would retire abashed before the timid glance of her pure eyes.”
“I hope so,” sez I dryly. “I hope so. But I never knew the whiteness of its wool to help a lamb if a wolfdog got after it. But mebby it will in her case,” sez I reasonably. “I don’t want to break up your happiness,” sez I.