That prayer had once been so familiar to him, and as he said it now the past came back again, and he was a boy once more, with all the glow and fervor of youth, and Lottie was to him all she had been when he first called her his wife, only he seemed to love her more; and with a choking sob he cried:
“I can’t let Lottie die. Oh, Father, save her for me, and I’ll be a better man.”
Softly he kissed the white hand he held, and his tears dropped upon it, and then a feeble voice said, in some surprise:
“Am, are you crying, or was it a dream? and did you pray for me, and do you love me sure, and want me to get well?”
“Yes, darling, I do,” and the sobs were loud now, and the strong man’s tears fell fast upon the face turned so wonderingly and joyfully toward him.
“Then I will get well,” Lottie said; “or at least I’ll try. I really thought you would be happier without me. I’ve been such a bother, and it was not worth while to make an effort, but, if you do love me and want me, it’s different, and I feel better already. Kiss me, Am, and if I live we’ll both start new and be good—won’t we?”
Lottie did not die, and when Kitty went to inquire for her next morning she found her better and brighter, with an expression of happiness on her face which she had never seen there before.
“I almost went over the river,” she said; “and felt sure I was dying when Am’s voice called me back. Dear old Am, do you think he actually prayed for me, that I might get well, and I thought once he did not believe in praying. Any way he used sometimes to say that my prayers were all humbug, and I guess they were; some of those long ones I used to make when I came from a dancing party at two in the morning, and he was tired and sleepy, and wanted me to turn off the gas. But he is different now, and says he loves me after all I’ve been. Why, I never gave him a speck of love, or kissed him of my own accord. But I’m going to do better; and I guess God let me live to prove to Am that there is a reality in our church as well as in others. He says he believes in the Methodist—his grandmother was one—and when we were first married he used to want me to play those funny hymns about ‘Traveling Home,’ and ‘Bound for the Land of Canaan,’—and he believes a little in the Presbyterians, and some in the Baptists, but not a bit in the Episcopalians—that is, he didn’t till he knew you, who, he thinks, are most as good as a Methodist; and I am going to try and convince him that I am sincere, and mean to do right and care for something besides fashion and dress. I have baby now to occupy my time, and I am glad, for when the spring bonnets and styles come out, my head might be turned again, for I do dote on lace and French flowers. Do you think I ought to wear a mob cap and a serge dress to mortify myself?”
Kitty did not think so; and when two months later she met, down in one of the miserable alleys in the city where want, and misery, and vice reigned supreme, “a love of a” French chip hat, trimmed with a bunch of exquisite pansies and blonde lace, she did not believe that the kindness paid to the poor old paralytic woman who died with her shriveled hand clasped in Lottie Steele’s, and her lips whispering the prayer Lottie had taught her, was less acceptable to God than it would have been had Lottie’s face and form been disfigured by the garb with which some well-meaning women make perfect frights of themselves.
Lottie’s heart was right at last, and Amasa never muttered now nor swore if he could not find his slippers while she was saying her prayers. On the contrary he said them with her, and tried to be a better man, just as he said he would, and at last one morning in June, when even the heated city seemed to laugh in the glorious summer sunshine, he knelt before the altar and himself received the rite of which he had once thought so lightly.