"I thought you wanted me to see the chickens," he evaded.
"I hate the chickens—and that was a lie about Snappy's supper. I just wanted to ask you about mother. Tell me quick, Harvey."
Harvey stammered something; but he needed to say no more—the girl sank sobbing at his feet.
"I knew it," she cried. "I just knew it—oh, mother, mother! And she'll soon never see again, and it'll always be night all the time—an' she'll never look at you or me any more, Harvey, she'll never look at you or me again. An' I got a little photograph took to-day, a little tintype—just five cents—an' I thought she'd be able to see it when she came back. Oh, Harvey, Harvey," and the unhappy child, long years a struggler with poverty and cloud, poured forth, almost as with a woman's voice, the first strain of anguish her little heart had ever known.
Harvey sank beside her, his arm holding her close. The twilight was now deepening into dark, a fitting mantel for these two enshadowed hearts. The still form of the bending brother, already giving promise of manhood's strength, seemed, even in outward aspect, to speak of inner compassion as he bended over the slender and weaker frame of his little sister. Strong and fearless and true he was; and if any eye had been keen enough to penetrate that encircling gloom and catch a vision of all that lay behind the humble scene, the knightly soul of the struggling boy would have stood forth like a sheltering oak—so powerless, nevertheless, to shield the clinging life beside him, overswept as it was by the winds and waves of sorrow. But the purpose and the heart were there—the fatherless spreading gentle wings above the fatherless—and the scene was a holy one, typical of all humanity at its highest, and faintly faltering the story of the Cross. For if human tenderness and pity are not lights, broken though they be, of the great Heart Divine, then all life's noblest voices are but mockery and lies.
"Don't, Jessie, please don't," he murmured, his own tears flowing fast. "It'll only keep her from getting better—she'll see your eyes all red an'——"
"She won't—she can't," sobbed the girl; "you know she can't—she can't see, Harvey," a fresh tide outbreaking at the thought.
"But she'll feel it, Jessie. Mothers can feel everything like that—'specially everybody's own mother," he urged, vainly trying to control his own grief. "And anyhow, the doctor said she might get better some time—perhaps all of a sudden. And we've got to help her, Jessie; and we've got to make her happy too—and we can—mother said we could," he cried, his tone growing firmer as the great life-work loomed before him.
Hope is the most contagious of all forms of health; and with wonderful gentleness and power the youthful comforter drew the sobbing heart beside him into the shelter of his own tender courage, the hiding-place of his own loving purpose. Soon Jessie was staring, wide-eyed, at her brother, as he unfolded the new duties they must perform together. That word itself was never used, but her heart answered, as all true hearts must ever answer, to the appeal of God.
"I'll try, Harvey," she said at last. "I'll do the best I can to help mother to get well—an' I'll get up in the mornings an' make the porridge myself," she avowed, smiling, the first step showing clear.