Still the smoke was there. Did God see it? Didn’t he care? Would he not answer because she had been so disobedient and because she had hated Aunt Rody?
“I will be good after this,” she sobbed. “I don’t want to be hateful. I will give up my will to Aunt Rody when she is right.” It was fainter; no, there it was again. Would the fire never go out?
Aunt Rody knew best. Perhaps Aunt Rody knew best about other things. Perhaps she was a Christian, a real disciple, only a very queer one.
Now it was so faint, so faint she could not see it at all. It was not because the tears were in her eyes; it was gone. It was gone. She felt all along the crack with her finger. It was not hot. And the smoke was gone. The fire was out; it was all burned out inside that crack.
And Aunt Rody need never know. And she would never, never, never disobey Aunt Rody again. Her mother had always told her she loved her own will too much; she would never love it so much again; she would say—what would she say? She knelt on the strip of rag-carpet where she had seen the girl kneel in her “picture” and repeated softly, through fast falling tears: “Our Father, who art in Heaven; Hallowed be thy name; Thy Kingdom come: Thy will be done; that was it; Thy will be done, Thy will be done,” she repeated joyfully over and over. “Make me love Thy will best. Make my will a good will, a sweet will, an obedient will.”
She did not know then that it was her turning point. The next day she loved to obey Aunt Rody. Aunt Rody did not ask her to do one disagreeable thing; and it was the queerest thing, Aunt Rody said, when she asked if she might sweep the sitting-room, “That’s a good girl.”
She did not tell any one about her fright over the match excepting John Kenney, Miss Marion’s brother, and Jean Draper. He had come to the parsonage for vacation. He was a big, handsome boy, as manly as the minister himself, and as gentle as a girl; one afternoon, when she and Jean Draper went off on a long stroll with him, and they began to tell stories of adventure of what they had read, or of what happened to them, she told her story about how the smoke got in a crack.
She only said she liked Aunt Rody better after that. She could not tell about her prayer. But John would have understood, she was sure.
He always looked as though he understood everything you meant, but did not know how to say.