So Vesty's heart was broken in her, and to me she came, as to a father, or more as to a friendly, favoring ghost.
"Take me back to the Basin!"
"Yes."
She sat in a kind of patient apathy, numb, her heart faithful with the dead.
"How little Gurd will call for you when he sees you again!" I spoke; but to waken her was to bring such a torrent of tears, choking, she entreated me not.
But, "It is well, I believe," I said to her; "there is life enough! Be sure he does not lack for life. What! do you think we have found the best of it, and all of it, here? I imagine God has enough! It is not because His bread fails Him that any go hungry, or because He lacks for gold that any are poor, but only for His purpose—we must guess—and when the poor, shattered school-house grows dark the light breaks elsewhere."
Vesty had not slept for two nights; the sweet face was haggard.
Again passing among crowds of restless, hurrying life, faces cold and strange, or often staring curiously, the haunted look of one lost came again into her eyes.
"I must go and take care of Gurd," she said, "as well as I can, while I live. O God! I hope he never may get lost, out in the world."
"No; how could he, in God's world?"