“Well,” sez I, “you’re young yet, you and Tom; you can wait a spell and trust the Lord and ask Him to help you out of your wilderness.”
“Oh, I do, Aunt Samantha! I ask Him, and I trust Him, or I couldn’t live. He has seemed so much nearer than ever before since I have been so wretched and haven’t known what to do.”
“Well, you know who said that all things work together for good to them that love God, and if you do love Him the promise is made to you, and you must lay holt of it.”
And then she went on and told me more about Tamer, and I did pity her, pity her like a dog. She said when Cicero wuz sent away her Pa, in the first hours when he wuz most dead with shame and mortification, told his wife she wuz the cause of it all; she had filled his brain with stories of vice and crime, and Cicero had acted out what his brain had been filled with, and from what Anna said I guess Hamen throwed Arabeller in her face and told her she had, for the sake of convenience and what she called gentility, just schooled Cicero in morbid romance and vicious adventure, and he sez, “You are now reaping what you have sown.” Anna said her Ma went into one hysterick fit after another, and she had to git her Pa out of the room and take care of her herself day after day, and sez she, “They are so cool to each other, now, I don’t believe they will ever be even friends agin, and everything is so sad, Aunt Samantha,” sez she.
And agin I told her, “It is always the darkest jest before day, Anna.”
But little did I think whose small hand it wuz that wuz goin’ to lift the cloud and let the light of reconciliation into the darkened home life of Hamen and Tamer and bring their hearts together agin. A Hamen realizin’ his own weaknesses and waywardness and softenin’ into a feeling of pity for the blind mistakes of a Tamer, and being willin’ to jine hands and hearts with her agin and pick up the tangled threads of life and try to straighten ’em out into plain runnin’ agin. Oh, poor little Jack! dear little creeter!
CHAPTER XXIV.
But to resoom backwards agin. Anna said her Ma had not only acted dretful cool and distant to her Pa ever since, but kep’ up a cool, icy demeanor towards everybody who pitied her over Cicero’s fate. And the thought her idee in givin’ the party wuz to show she could still keep up and hold her ground, and wuz not such a forlorn object of pity as they all seemed to think. Well, Tamer did look queer, her face put me in mind some of our creek before it breaks up in the spring, sort o’ cold and smooth and ice bound, and as if you would be apt to slip up if you ventured a foot on it.