"Oh, I should like it so much," said the girl gently.
Duncan opened the Book reverently, his face glowing; then he paused and looked at her again. "Oh, but it is you will be the fine reader, and my eyes will not be so good, indeed, since this cold, and maybe you would jist be reading this now, and I would be much obliged, whatever."
Jessie took the Bible, and read where he had indicated. It was the sweet story of Mary, who sat at the Master's feet. She had read it many times before, but it had never seemed quite the same, for, when she finished, Duncan Polite said softly, "Yes, that will be it, oh yes, indeed, jist to sit at His feet and learn of Him."
That was the first of many visits the girl paid the old man. Duncan never left his own house, though his sister begged him to spend the winter with her. But the watchman must not leave his post, he felt, and his loneliness was more than compensated for by Jessie's visits. Through his long, weary convalescence the girl came regularly two or three times a week, with the dainties her mother was in the habit of lavishing upon the sick. At first her sisters teased her about her sudden change of mind regarding visiting Duncan Polite. Maggie declared she liked to go because she had to pass the McNabbs' and would likely see the minister, but Sarah gave it as her opinion that she went to get the latest news of Donald.
Jessie paid no heed to their raillery beyond smiling enigmatically. They little guessed her real motive. She looked forward to her visits eagerly as the winter progressed. Gradually her heart was opening to the old man's teaching. He said very little, but every word he uttered the girl carried away in her heart. The visit always ended by their reading a few verses of the Bible together, and one day, before she left, Duncan laid his hand gently upon her curls and said softly, "The Lord bless thee, and keep thee!" and she went away feeling that a benediction had fallen upon her.
At the time of these visits to Duncan Polite, Jessie was studying, with the other members of the Christian Endeavour Society, the life of Christ. The meetings were well attended, and Mr. Egerton gave them a most graphic and interesting account of the historical and picturesque aspect of the wondrous season upon earth of the Son of the Most High. But Jessie went up to the little shanty on the hilltop for the spiritual side. Under Duncan's gentle, humble dealing with the divine mystery, the girl gradually came to comprehend, in a measure, what Duncan had termed "the vision." She understood, at last, the meaning of the Great Sacrifice, beside which all possible human sacrifice stands poor and mean. She caught a gleam of the light from Calvary, and in its searching effulgent blaze all the faint glitter of worldly achievement grew dim and disappeared.
Among other things which she saw for the first time in their proper light was her association with the young minister. She knew now that only her poor pride in the envy she excited had made her desire his attentions. She looked at the man himself with new eyes, and though slow to blame another in her new-found humility, she could not help thinking how different it might have been with her and Donald had their pastor had more of the spirit of Duncan Polite.
But she did not criticise him; her own idle, careless life she found too full of faults to censure another. That life was gradually being turned to higher aims, for a new Jessie Hamilton had been born that winter, and one who was destined to help fulfil the old watchman's great desire.