“Why?” asked Judith impatiently.
“Because God says so; that is the best reason I know. And my somebody came. Somebody to help in the work planned for both of us. And the happy thing about it (one of the happy things) was that the somebody started to come to me before I began to ask. Sometimes, people say things will happen if we don’t pray; perhaps they will, it is not for me to say they will not, but the happening will not be in answer to prayer, and that has a joyfulness of its own, that nobody knows except the One who answers and the one who prays. That is a joy too great to be told. Sometimes, I know that I have been as happy over an answered prayer as I can be. And I can be very happy,” Aunt Affy said, with happy tears shining in her eyes.
“This somebody was not anybody new, or strange, or very far off; when I thought about it there was no surprise in it; it was somebody who had been coming to meet me a long while—in preparation. Then, we were ready to be co-workers in a very simple way, making no stir, but I trust our work together will not prove hay or stubble in the last day. It was somebody I chose myself; we do a great deal of our own choosing. But it was God’s work and God’s workers, like Judah and Simeon. There was prayer first, and Judah using his knowledge and judgment. No wonder God could keep his promise; they helped him keep his promise, as you and I do. Do you remember what Andrew did after Jesus called him and asked him to spend that day with him? ‘He first findeth his own brother.’”
“My only brother is found,” said Marion. “Now some one else may be ‘first.’”
“And I haven’t any,” said listening Judith. “But I have my cousin Don; I wonder about him.”
“We each have our own; whoever we find is our own. This is our own world,” Aunt Affy replied in her happy voice.
Marion’s question was answered. Aunt Affy always understood what was surging underneath her restless, foamy current of talk.
Since she had known Aunt Affy she had grown quieter; she had come to Bensalem “in a fume,” she told Aunt Affy, and the air, or “something,” was making things look different.
Aunt Affy smiled her wise, sweet smile; she knew the time came to girls when things had to “look different.”