XXVI. AUNT AFFY’S FAITH AND JUDITH’S FOREIGN LETTER.
“If I could only surely know
That all these things that tire me so
Were noticed by my Lord.”
At the supper table Aunt Affy asked Judith if she would sit in the entry near Aunt Rody’s door and watch while she “ran out a minute to see Mrs. Evans about something.”
With the instinct of the story-teller Judith remembered the little girl who used to sit there and sew carpet-rags, and began to weave herself into a story; the “The Child’s Outlook” was not very hopeful, she thought, but she gave the story a happy ending, just as she herself expected to have a happy ending. She did not know why she had to sit there and watch; there had been no change for days; perhaps Aunt Affy wished her to sit and watch for Aunt Rody to die. The light from a shaded lamp on a table at the foot of the bed, did not touch the sleeping face—the sleeping face, or the dead face, and Judith’s eyes were turned away; she was watching without seeing.
She was too miserable to open a book; she was too miserable to think; she thought she was too miserable to pray.
The tears came softly, softly and slowly; face and fingers were wet; the only cry in her heart was “mother, mother.”
“Mother, I want you,” she sobbed, “will not God let you come back a little while?”
The doors were wide open all through the house; in the sitting-room there were low voices, at first her dulled ears caught no articulate word, then the voice of Mrs. Evans spoke clearly: she was saying something about “faith.”