Maybelle was silent for several minutes, and her eyes were soft with unshed tears. Then she spoke gently:—
"What a lovely thought! thank you."
After a moment she began again, earnestly.
"Mrs. Burnham, there is something I want you to know. What I am sure that Madame Sternheim thinks about my papa isn't true. Papa learned how to pray; and every afternoon during those last few weeks, he and I used to read in the Bible together, and pray. And the last time I saw him he told me that, although he had wasted his life, and been in every way a different man from what he ought to have been, God had forgiven him, and was going to take him home. He wasn't a bad man, ever, Mrs. Burnham; at least—well, I know he did some wrong things, but he was good in many ways. He had a very low estimate of himself, though, and those were the words he said. I shall never forget the last sentence he ever spoke; I can often close my eyes and seem to hear his dear voice with its note of exultation, 'It is wonderful, but I am going home!' He used to speak that word 'home' in a peculiar manner; his voice seemed to linger over it lovingly, like a caress. He had no home, you know, after mamma went away."
This was Maybelle's way of speaking of death; but the woman, who realized how literally the phrase "went away" applied to this child's mother, could never hear it without an inward shudder. Her own eyes had dimmed with tears as she listened to this pathetic and yet gracious close of a wasted life. Then she acted upon a sudden resolution.
"Maybelle, dear, there is one person for whom I want you to pray with all your soul; that is my son's wife."
"Your daughter?" said Maybelle, lingering over the word as a sweet sound, yet with a hint of surprise in her tone, as though she might almost ask, "Why should any woman so blessed as she need praying for?" But what she added was:—
"I should love to pray for her. Tell me about her, please. She must be a very happy woman to have the right to call you 'mother.' What is it you want me to ask for her? Of course she is a Christian?"
"She is a member of the church," said Ruth. "But I do not think she knows the Lord Jesus in the way that you and I know Him, or that she loves and serves Him."
"Oh!" said Maybelle, and that single mono-syllable from her lips meant much. Surprise, regret, pity, resolve, were all expressed in it.