XIV.—WHEAT, NOT BREAD.
Early one evening Tessa was writing alone in her own chamber; Dinah was spending a few days in Dunellen; while Dinah was away she wrote more than usual out of her loneliness.
Becoming wearied she laid the neat manuscript away and began scribbling with a pencil on a half sheet of foolscap; the disconnected words revealed the thoughts that had been troubling her all day.
“Counsel. Waiting. Asking. Deception. Years and years. Oh, I want to go to heaven.”
A tap at the door sounded twice before it broke upon her reverie; absent-mindedly she opened the door, but the absent-mindedness was lost in the flash of light that burst over her face when she recognized, in the twilight, the one person in all the world whom she wished to see.
“Oh, I was wishing for you! Did some good spirit send you.”
“I have been feeling all day that you wanted me,” said the little woman suffering herself to be drawn into the room. “What are you doing?”
“Feeling wicked and miserable and wanting to go to heaven.”
“You are not the kind to go to heaven, you are the kind to stay on earth; what would you do in heaven if you do not love to do God’s will on earth?”
Tessa drew her rocker nearer the open window and seated her guest in it, moved a low seat beside it, and sat down folding her hands in her lap.