Friend Barton's light was not quenched. Words came to him, without seeking,—a sure sign that the Spirit was with him,—in which to “open the concern” that had ripened in his mind, of a religious visit to the meeting constituting the yearly meetings of Philadelphia and Baltimore. A “minute” was given him, encouraging him in the name, and with the full concurrence, of the monthly meetings of Nine Partners and Stony Valley, to go wherever the Truth might lead him.
While Friend Barton was thus freshly anointed, and “abundantly encouraged,” his wife, Rachel, was talking with Dorothy, in the low upper chamber known as the “wheel-room.”
Dorothy was spinning wool on the big wheel, dressed in her light calico short gown and brown quilted petticoat; her arms were bare, and her hair was gathered away from her flushed cheeks and knotted behind her ears. The roof sloped down on one side, and the light came from a long, low window under the eaves. There was another window (shaped like a half-moon, high up in the peak), but it sent down only one long beam of sunlight, which glimmered across the dust and fell upon Dorothy's white neck.
The wheel was humming a quick measure and Dorothy trod lightly back and forth, the wheel-pin in one hand, the other holding the tense, lengthening thread, which the spindle devoured again.
“Dorothy, thee looks warm: can't thee sit down a moment, while I talk to thee?”
“Is it anything important, mother? I want to get my twenty knots before dinner.” She paused as she joined a long tress of wool at the spindle. “Is it anything about father?”
“Yes, it's about father, and all of us.”
“I know,” said Dorothy, with a sigh. “He's going away again!”
“Yes, dear. He feels that he is called. It is a time of trouble and contention everywhere: 'the harvest,' truly, 'is plenteous, but the laborers are few.'”
“There are not so many 'laborers' here, mother, though to be sure, the harvest”—