"Then, Juanita, I suppose—if I get tired lying here,—I can do patience work?"
"Jesus will have his people do a great deal of that work," said Mrs. Benoit tenderly. "And it is work that pleases him, Miss Daisy. My love is very weary?"
"I suppose, Juanita, if I was really patient, I shouldn't be. Should I?
I think I am impatient."
"My love knows who carries the lambs in his bosom."
Daisy's tired face smoothed itself out at this. She turned her eyes to the window with a placid look of rest in them.
"Jesus knows where the trouble is," said the black woman. "He knows all. And he can help too. Now I am going to get something to do Miss Daisy good."
Before this could be done, there came a heavy clumping step up to the house and a knock at the door; and then a person entered whom Juanita did not know. A hard-featured woman, in an old-fashioned black straw bonnet and faded old shawl drawn tight round her. She came directly forward to Daisy's couch.
"Well I declare if it ain't true! Tied by the heels, ain't ye?"—was her salutation. Juanita looked, and saw that Daisy recognized the visiter; for she smiled at her, half pleasure, half assent to what she said.
"I heerd of it—that is, I heerd you'd gone up to the mountain and broke something; I couldn't find out what 'twas; and then Hephzibah she said she would go down to Melbourne Sunday. I said to her, says I, 'Hephzibah, I wouldn't go all that ways, child, for to do nothing; 'tain't likely but that some part of the story's true, if you and me can't find out which;' but Hephzibah she took her own head and went; and don't you think, she came back a cryin'?"
"What was that for?" said Daisy, looking very much interested.