March and May had gone through orchard and gardens to fetch her an hour ago. Her father had eaten his evening meal at the same table with her. In the circumstances there was nothing to say, a fact comprehended by all except the unconscious offender.
“I think Mrs. Wayt will find her horse gentle,” said Judge Gilchrist, in formal civility too palpable to his wife.
With intelligent apprehension of the truth, too often overlooked, that confidence in the truth bearer must precede obedience to his message, she desired that her husband and son should like Mr. Wayt. To March she had confessed her fear that some of the family were “peculiar,” and he might infer the inclusion of the nominal head in the category. Further than this she would not go. With pious haste she picked the fly out of the ointment, and with holy duplicity beguiled others into approval of the article that bore the trade mark of “The Church.”
Ah, the Church!—in every age and, despite lapses and shortcomings and stains, the custodian of the Ark of God—her debt to such devout and loyal souls as this woman’s will never be estimated until the Master shall make acknowledgment of it in the great day of reckoning.
When the judge’s turn of the subject and the “horsey” talk that followed granted his wife leisure to reconsider the matter, she discovered that there was no cause for discomfiture. Mr. Wayt was absent-minded, as were all students of deep things. Only, her husband was quick of sight and wit, and neither March nor May had much to say, of late, of the new preacher who was doing such excellent work in the congregation. March went regularly to church and sat beside his mother through prayer and hymn and sermon, and afterward refrained from adverse criticism. This may have been out of respect to the girl he hoped to make his wife. Yet she had dared fancy that the graver tenderness of his behavior to herself and the unusual periods of thoughtfulness that occurred in their conversations had to do with the dawning of spiritual life in his soul. However much certain of Mr. Wayt’s mannerisms might offend her taste, there was no question of his ability and eloquence. That these might be the divinely appointed nets for the ingathering into the Church of her best beloved was a burden that weighted every petition.
March had not spoken openly of his love for Hetty Alling since the evening on which he first avowed it to his mother, but, in her opinion, there was nothing significant in this reserve. The Gilchrists were delicate in their dealings with one another, never asking inconvenient questions, or pushing communication beyond the voluntary stage. If May divined the drift of her brother’s affections, she did not intimate it by word or look. When the fruit of confidence was ripe it would be dropped into her lap. She did note what Mrs. Gilchrist had not the opportunity of seeing—how seldom Hetty had leisure to receive March or his sister. She was getting ready the wardrobe of the twin boys, who were to go to boarding school the 1st of October. Through Hester’s talk May had learned incidentally that the Wayts employed neither dressmaker nor seamstress.
“Hetty is miraculously skillful with her needle,” was Hester’s way of putting it, “and so swift that it would drive her wild to see her work done by the ‘young lady who goes out by the day.’ I work buttonholes and hem ruffles and such like, and mamma gives her all the time she can spare from baby—and other things. But our Hetty is the motor of the household machine. I don’t believe there is another like her in the world. The mold in which she was cast was broken.”
She had said this in a chat held with her favorite this evening while the others were engaged with other themes outside of the window. May encouraged her to go on by remarking:
“You love her as dearly as if she were really your sister, don’t you?”
“‘As well!’ The love I have for mother, sisters, and brothers is a drop in the ocean compared with what I feel for Hetty! See here, Miss May!” showing her perfectly formed hands. “These were as helpless as my feet. Hetty rubbed me, bathed me, flexed the muscles for an hour every morning and an hour every night. She tempted me to eat; obliged me to take exercise; carried me up and down stairs, and sat with me in her arms out of doors until she had saved fifty dollars out of her allowance to have my chair built. Hetty educated me—made me over! She is my brain, the blood of my heart—I don’t believe I should have a soul but for Hetty!”