TESTED.
Ester was winding the last smooth coil of hair around her head when
Sadie opened her eyes the next morning.
"My!" she said. "Do you know, Ester, it is perfectly delightful to me to lie here and look at you, and remember that I shall not be responsible for those cakes this morning? They shall want a pint of soda added to them for all that I shall need to know or care."
Ester laughed. "You will surely have your pantry well stocked with soda," she said, gayly. "It seems to have made a very strong impression on your mind."
But the greeting had chimed with her previous thoughts and sounded pleasant to her. She had come home to be the helper; her mother and Sadie should feel and realize after this how very much of a helper she could be. That very day should be the commencement of her old, new life. It was baking day—her detestation heretofore, her pleasure now. No more useful day could be chosen. How she would dispatch the pies and cakes and biscuits, to say nothing of the wonderful loaves of bread. She smiled brightly on her young sister, as she realized in a measure the weight of care which she was about to lift from her shoulders; and by the time she was ready for the duties of the day she had lived over in imagination the entire routine of duties connected with that busy, useful, happy day. She went out from her little clothes-press wrapped in armor—the pantry and kitchen were to be her battle-field, and a whole host of old temptations and trials were there to be met and vanquished. So Ester planned, and yet it so happened that she did not once enter the kitchen during all that long busy day, and Sadie's young shoulders bore more of the hundred little burdens of life that Saturday than they had ever felt before. Descending the stairs, Ester met Dr. Van Anden for the first time since her return. He greeted her with a hurried "good-morning," quite as if he had seen her only the day before, and at once pressed her into service:
"Miss Ester, will you go to Mr. Holland immediately? I can not find your mother. Send Mrs. Holland from the room, she excites him. Tell her I say she must come immediately to the sitting-room; I wish to see her. Give Mr. Holland a half teaspoonful of the mixture in the wine-glass every ten minutes, and on no account leave him until I return, which will be as soon as possible."
And seeming to be certain that his directions would be followed, the doctor vanished.
For only about a quarter of a minute did Ester stand irresolute. Dr. Van Anden's tone and manner were full of his usual authority—a habit with him which had always annoyed her. She shrank with a feeling amounting almost to terror from a dark, quiet room, and the position of nurse. Her base of operations, according to her own arrangements, had been the light, airy kitchen, where she felt herself needed at this very moment. But one can think of several things in a quarter of a minute. Ester had very lately taken up the habit of securing one Bible verse as part of her armor to go with her through the day. On this particular morning the verse was: "Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might." Now if her hands had found work waiting for her down this first flight of stairs instead of down two, as she had planned, what was that to her? Ester turned and went swiftly to the sick room, dispatched the almost frantic wife according to the doctor's peremptory orders, gave the mixture as directed, waited patiently for the doctor's return, only to hear herself installed as head nurse for the day; given just time enough to take a very hurried second table meal with Sadie, listen to her half pitiful, half comic complainings, and learn that her mother was down with sick headache.
So it was that this first day at home drew toward its closing; and not one single thing that Ester had planned to do, and do so well, had she been able to accomplish. It had been very hard to sit patiently there and watch the low breathings of that almost motionless man on the bed before her, to rouse him at set intervals sufficiently to pour some mixture down his unwilling lips, to fan him occasionally, and that was all. It had been hard, but Ester had not chafed under it; she had recognized the necessity—no nurse to be found, her mother sick, and the young, frightened, as well as worn-out wife, not to be trusted. Clearly she was at the post of duty. So as the red sun peeped in a good-night from a little corner of the closed curtain, it found Ester not angry, but very sad. Such a weary day! And this man on the bed was dying; both doctors had looked that at each other at least a dozen times that day. How her life of late was being mixed up with death. She had just passed through one sharp lesson, and here at the threshold awaited another. Different from that last though—oh, very different—and herein lay some of the sadness. Mr. Foster had said "every thing was ready for the long journey, even should there be no return." Then she went back for a minute to the look of glory on that marble face, and heard again that wonderful sentence: "So he giveth his beloved sleep." But this man here! every thing had not been made ready by him. So at least she feared. Yet she was conscious, professed Christian though she had been, living in the same house with him for so many years, that she knew very little about him. She had seen much of him, had talked much with him, but she had never mentioned to him the name of Christ, the name after which she called herself. The sun sank lower, it was almost gone; this weary day was nearly done; and very sad and heavy-hearted felt this young watcher—the day begun in brightness was closing in gloom. It was not all so clear a path as she had thought; there were some things that she could not undo. Those days of opportunity, in which she might at least have invited this man to Jesus, were gone; it seemed altogether probable that there would never come another. There was a little rustle of the drapery about the bed, and she turned suddenly, to meet the great searching eyes of the sick man, bent full upon her. Then he spoke in low, but wonderfully distinct and solemn tones. And the words he slowly uttered were yet more startling:
"Am I going to die?"