“Not rally again at all, you say! all stuff and nonsense,” he was retorting on Miss Kester when I returned. “Here’s the wine, at last! Now for a glass, Johnny.”
She sipped about a teaspoonful by degrees. The shade on her face was getting darker. Her poor thin fingers kept plucking at the cotton shawl.
“I have never done any harm that I knew of: at least, not wilfully,” she slowly panted, looking piteously at the Squire, evidently dwelling upon the accusation made by Benevolence Hall: and it had, Miss Kester said, troubled her frightfully. “I was only silly—and inexperienced—and—and believed in everybody. Oh, sir, it was hard!”
“I’d prosecute them if I could,” cried the Squire, fiercely. “There, there; don’t think about it any more; it’s all over.”
“Yes, it is over,” she sighed, giving the words a different meaning from his. “Over; over: the struggles and the disappointments, the privations and the pain. Only God sees what mine have been, and how I’ve tried to bear up in patience. Well, well; He knows best: and I think—I do think, sir—He will make it up to us in heaven. My poor mother thought the same when she was dying.”
“To be sure,” answered the Squire, soothingly. “One must be a heathen not to know that. Hang that set-the-world-to-rights company!” he muttered in a whisper.
“The bitterness of it all has left me,” she whispered, with pauses between the words for want of breath; “this world is fading from my sight, the world to come opening. Only this morning, falling asleep in the chair here, after the fatigue of getting up—and putting on my things—and coughing—I dreamt I saw the Saviour holding out His hand to welcome me, and I knew He was waiting to take me up to God. The clouds round about Him were rose colour; a light, as of gold, lay in the distance. Oh, how lovely it was! nothing but peace. Yes, yes, God will forgive all our trials and our shortcomings, and make it up to us there.”
The room had a curious hush upon it. It hardly seemed to be a living person speaking. Any way, she would not be living long.
“Another teaspoonful of wine, Johnny,” whispered the Squire. “Dear, dear! Where on earth can that doctor be?”
I don’t believe a drop of it went down her throat. Miss Kester wiped away the damp from her brow. A cough took her; and afterwards she lay back again in the chair.