UNCLE BENNY SAILS AWAY TO GALILEE
Say the philosophers how, to the properly sane mind, there is no sorrow. But Vesty, only a Basin, fighting Christ's war against the flesh—Vesty had sorrow.
"It was," she confessed to me alone, I being as a ghost or confessor—"it was like pulling my heart out, to have Notely go away so. It was like taking little Gurd away—but it was the only way."
"He has gone back to his wife?"
"Yes." Vesty shivered. I had chanced to meet her in the lane, and the wind was chill.
"And what are you going to do, Vesty?"
"I am going where they want me to help." She held the thin, frayed shawl at her neck, the rosy child wrapped as usual on her arm: "there is always some one wanting me to help, and little Gurd is not so much care now but I can get along with it."
"You go out as general drudge or charwoman!" I felt my nostrils quiver and a bitter harshness in my voice.
Vesty looked at me with surprise. "I go to help," she said, "just as you helped me, with Uncle Benny, when I was sick."
"Oh, I could do"—the child knew not with what a glance I studied her face—"what it is hard to let you do, Vesty."