"Never fear," said Matthew, cheerfully. "The children will take good care of me. I shall do very well. There is no need for you to hurry yourself."
Mrs. Reardon went away with a heavy heart, nevertheless. But it was heavier still when she came back, long before they had begun to expect her, pale, weary, and empty-handed, and sitting down before the fireless hearth, covered her face with her apron, and wept aloud.
For a few moments the children stood and watched her, thinking that she had lost the bundle of work; and then, not knowing what to say to comfort her, began to cry also.
The sound of their grief, together with the remembrance of her sick husband, aroused the poor wife and mother to the necessity for exertion. Well knowing that nothing is so hard to bear as suspense, she told Matthew what had happened, for Mrs. Browne, as the reader already knows, had made up her mind to give her no more work.
"If I understand rightly," said he, "the work is only kept back for a time? Mrs. Browne will be glad to let you have it again when—"
"When you are better," interrupted his wife, quickly. "Yes, that must have been what she meant. But how are you to regain your strength, and get better without food to eat—leave alone nourishing food, such as the doctor spoke of? What will become of us now that this hardhearted woman has taken the bread out of our mouths!"
"It mayn't be for long," said Matthew, in a cheerful voice; "somehow I don't think it will. And meanwhile, as the children were singing just before you came in:
"'The Lord will provide.'
"What was the text you were learning, Bess?"
"Though He kill me, yet will I trust Him," answered the child.