"I did not say that they had not; but they don't have to report to me; the Head of the Church will see to that."
Then Dennis, the Academy man-of-all-work, had taken the reins, while Louis was in the act of tucking the robes more carefully about her, and driven rapidly away.
"It is queer how things work," Ruth Jennings said, as a party of the girls gathered around their teacher to report progress. "There are a dozen things that have had to lie idle, waiting for you. Why do you suppose we had to be interrupted in our plans, and almost stand still and do nothing, while you lay on a couch with a sprained ankle? I'm sure we were doing nice things and right things, and we needed you, and it could do no possible good to anybody for you to lie and suffer up there for a week. I do say it looks sometimes as if things just happened in this world, or else were managed by somebody who hated the world and every good plan that was made for it. Don't you really think that Satan has a good deal of control, Miss Benedict?"
But there were reasons why Miss Benedict thought it would be as well not to let her pupil wander off just then on a misty sea of questionings. As for herself, she had no doubt that the interruption was for some good end; it is true, she could not see the end, but she trusted it.
You are to remember that she had had her sharper lessons, beside which all this was the merest child's play. Those girls could not possibly know how that awful "why" had tortured her through days and nights until that memorable Sunday night when God gave her victory. What interruptions had come to her! Father and fortune, and home, and life-work, cut off in a moment; the whole current of her life changed; changed in ways that would not do even to hint to the girls; what was a sprained ankle and a few days of inaction compared with these! Yet their evident chafing over the loss of time opened her eyes to a new truth. It seemed such a trivial thing to her, that she could scarce restrain her lips from a smile over their folly in dwelling on it, until suddenly there dashed over her the thought:
"What if, in the light of Heaven, my interruptions all seem as small as this?"
The interrupted work was now taken up with renewed energy, and indeed blossomed at once into new varieties.
"What we must do next is to give a concert."
This was the spark that the music-teacher threw into the midst of the group of girls who occupied various attitudes about her chair. It was evening, and they were gathered in her room for a chat as to ways and means. Several days had passed, and the foot was so far recovered that its owner promised it a walk down the church aisle on the following Sabbath, provided Dennis could arrange to have it taken to the door. It still, however, occupied a place of honor among the cushions, and Claire sat back in the depths of a great comfortable rocker that had been brought from the parlor for her use.
"A concert!" repeated Ruth, great dismay in her voice, "us?"