“Yes, Muggins, God hears everybody, black as well as white.”
“Then I jest go down in the woods whar Claib can’t see me, and ax Him to cure Mas’r Hugh, not take him to heaven. I don’t like dat ar.”
It was in vain that Alice tried to explain. Muggins’ mind grasped but one idea. Master Hugh must live; and she started to leave the room, turning back to ask, “if God could hear all the same if she got down by the brook where the bushes were so thick that Claib nor nobody could find her if they tried.” Assured that he would, she stole from the house, and seeking out the hiding place kneeled down upon the tall, rank grass, and with her face hidden in the roots of the alder bushes, she asked in her peculiar way, that “God would not take Mas’r Hugh to heaven, but give him a heap of doctor’s stuff, and make him well again,” promising, if he did, that “She would not steal any more jam from the jars in the cellar, or any more sugar from the bowl in the closet.” She could not remember for whose sake Alice had bidden her pray, so she said, “for the sake of him what miss done tell me,” adding quickly, “Miss Alice, I mean, not Miss ’Lina! Bah!”
Muggins intended no irreverence, nor did she dream that she was guilty of any. She only felt that she had done her best, and into her childish heart there crept a trusting faith that God had surely heard, and Mas’r Hugh would live.
And who shall say that He did not hear and answer Muggin’s prayer, made by the running brook, where none but Him could hear?
Meantime, the Hugh for whom the prayer was made had fallen into a heavy sleep, and Aunt Eunice noiselessly left the room, meeting in the hall with Alice, who asked permission to go in and sit by him until he awoke. Aunt Eunice consented, and with noiseless footsteps Alice advanced into the darkened room, and after standing still for a moment to assure herself that Hugh was really sleeping, stole softly to his bedside and bent down to look at him, starting quickly at the resemblance to somebody seen before. Who was it? Where was it? she asked herself, her brain a labyrinth of bewilderment as she tried in vain to recall the time or place a face like this reposing upon the pillow had met her view. But her efforts were all in vain to bring the past to mind, and thinking she was mistaken in supposing she had ever seen him before, she sat softly down beside him.
How disappointed Alice was in him, asking herself if it could be the dreaded Hugh. There was surely nothing to be dreaded from him now, and as if she had been his sister she wiped the sweat drops from his face.
There was a tremulous motion of the lids, a contracting of the muscles about the mouth, and then the eyes opened for a moment, but the stare he gave to Alice was wholly meaningless. He evidently had no thought of her presence, though he murmured the name “Golden Hair,” and then fell away again into the heavy stupor which continued all the day. Alice would not leave him. She had heard him say, “When she watches by me as perhaps she will, though I may not know her,” and that was sufficient to keep her at his side. She was accustomed to sickness, she said, and in spite of Aunt Eunice’s entreaties, she sat by his pillow, bathing his burning hands, holding the cooling ice upon his head, putting it to his lips, and doing those thousand little acts which only a kind womanly heart can prompt, and silently praying almost constantly as Hugh had said she must.
There were others than Alice praying for Hugh that summer afternoon, for Muggins had gone from the brook to the cornfield, startling Adah with the story of Hugh’s sickness, and then launching out into a glowing description of the new miss, “with her white gownd and curls as long as Rocket’s tail.”
“She talked with God, too,” she said, “like what you does, Miss Adah. She axes him to make Mas’r Hugh well, and He will, won’t He?”