Too much agitated to know just what he said, Aunt Eunice listened as one who heard not, noticing which the doctor said,
“You are not the right one to take these directions. Is there nobody here less nervous than yourself? Who was that young lady standing by the door when I came in. The one in white, I mean, with such a quantity of curls.”
“Miss Johnson—our visitor. She can’t do anything,” Aunt Eunice replied, trying to compose herself enough to know what she was doing.
But the doctor thought differently. Something of a physiognomist, he had been struck with the expression of Alice’s face, and felt sure that she would be a more efficient aid than Aunt Eunice herself. “I’ll speak to her,” he said, stepping to the hall. But Alice was gone. She had stood by the sick room door long enough to hear Hugh’s impassioned words concerning his probable death—long enough to hear him ask that she might pray for him; and then she stole away to where no ear, save that of God, could hear the earnest prayer that Hugh Worthington might live—or that dying, there might be given him a space in which to grasp the faith, without which the grave is dark and terrible indeed.
“I’m glad I came here now,” she whispered, as she rose from her knees. “I know my work in part, and may God give me strength to do it.”
“Is you talkin’ to God, Miss Alice?” said a little voice, and Mug’s round black face looked cautiously in.
“Yes, Muggins, I was talking to God.”
“I’d mighty well like to know what you done say,” was Mug’s next remark, as she ventured across the threshold.
“I asked him to make your Master Hugh well again, or else take him to heaven,” was Alice’s reply; whereupon the great tears gathered in the eyes of the awe-struck child, who continued,
“I wish I could ax God, too. Would he hear a black nigger like me?”