“Aunt Affy, I brought a question to-day, as I always do,” began Marion, and Judith’s fingers stayed that she might hear the question and the answer.
She did not know how to ask Marion’s questions, but she did know how to understand something of Aunt Affy’s answers. In her spiritual and intellectual appreciation she was far ahead of anyone’s knowledge of her. She had a talent for receptivity and, girl as she was, for discipline.
“If you had read the Bible through forty times, as Aunt Affy has, you would know all the answers,” said Judith.
“Forty times,” repeated Marion, in amazement.
“I did not tell her; she found it out,” replied Aunt Affy, with humility; “I read my mother’s Bible, and Judith found dates and numbers in the back of it, so I had to tell her it was the number of times I had read it through.”
“You were as young as I when you began,” said Marion.
“I was twenty; I felt so alone somehow, that year, I yearned for it. I read it through in less than a year, then I began again, and next year again, now it is second nature; I should be lost without it.”
“What is second nature?” asked the girl on the floor, among the carpet rags.
“It is something that is so much a part of yourself,—that comes after you have your first nature—that it is as much your nature as if you were born first so,” answered Aunt Affy with pauses for clearness. “You feel as if you were born the second time, and it would be as hard to get rid of as though you were born the first time with it.”
“Carpet rags will never be my second nature,” sighed Judith, picking up a long, red strip. “I wish reading the Bible would.”