On the whole, she was more than doubtful as to the unusual work done in this leisure half-hour, and looked with apprehension rather than pleasure at the name in her book. Nevertheless, she prayed over it as she had been wont to do for those who were gone now. There was nothing for it but to ask Him who never made mistakes, to overrule hers, if it was a mistake, and use it in some way for his glory. This rested her. It was so wonderful to remember that He could make even mistakes serve him!
Meantime, Bud! The little lamp which belonged to his quarters over the stable, was left wholly to his care, and he did not get the best. He often stumbled his way to bed in the dark, rather than take the trouble of filling the lamp in the daytime. But to-night, with his treasure under his arm, he rejoiced to remember that part of his morning work had been to fill that lamp and put it in unusual order. It was with satisfaction that he lighted and set it on the inverted barrel that he had improvised for a table. He was to read a verse in a book!
He had little knowledge as to whether the verses were long or short, whether it would take until midnight or longer to read one, and it had nothing to do with his promise. He reflected that the lamp was full, and resolved that as long as it would burn he would work at the verse, if necessary. But where to begin? What a big book it was! If Clare had but marked a verse for him as she had planned! Well, what then? It would not have been likely to have been the one over which he stopped at random, and slowly spelled out, going back over each word until he had the sentence complete: "As one whom his mother comforteth, so will I comfort you, and ye shall be comforted in Jerusalem." What a verse for poor, ignorant, blundering Bud! Might it not as well have been in Greek?
CHAPTER XVIII.
BUD IN SEARCH OF COMFORT.
LET me tell you that sentences which you believe will be as Greek to certain souls, are sometimes fraught with wonderful meaning, because of an illumination about which you know nothing. It was so with Bud.
Back in his memory of those bright days when little Jack was still in the flesh, were certain scenes standing out vividly. Little Jack had a mother, a good, fat, motherly, commonplace sort of woman, with no knowledge of, or care for, Bud, beyond the fact that she wanted him always to have enough to eat and a comfortable place in which to sleep, and was glad that little Jack liked him so well, simply because it was a liking that gave little Jack pleasure. This was all that she would have been to you; but to Bud she would have served for his ideal of an angel, had he known anything about angels.
She was little Jack's mother, and she was motherly, and Bud had never seen a motherly woman before; perhaps, after all, you get an idea of why she was glorified in his eyes. His own mother slept in a neglected grave, when Bud was five years old, but after he came to live at little Jack's, he had lain awake nights to think how she would have looked, and acted, and spoken, had she been alive. And she always looked to him like this one motherly pattern. How Bud longed for her, for the sound of her voice, for the touch of her hand, only he could have told you. Little Jack had been in the habit of running to mother with every disappointment, every grievance, every pain. He had never been a healthy, rollicking, self-reliant boy, but a gentle, tender one, to be shielded and petted; and Bud had heard again and again and again these words, spoken oh! so tenderly, that the memory of them now often brought the tears: "Poor little Jack! mother will comfort him!" and the words were accompanied with a gesture that framed itself in Bud's heart—the enveloping of little Jack's frail form within two strong motherly arms, suggestive to the boy of boundless power and protectiveness. Could words better fitted to meet Bud's heart have been marked in his Bible? Would Claire Benedict have been likely to have marked that particular verse for him?
It is a truth that a certain class of Christian workers need to ponder deeply, that when we have done our best, according to the measure of our opportunities, we may safely leave the Holy Spirit to supplement our work.