"While I stood there, hearing the morning's promise, I suppose, without knowing it—there came up from the streets somewhere below me, and near, the song of a chimney-sweep. I can never tell you how it came! It came—but not yet; at first I only knew what he was singing by the notes of the air; but the next verse he began came up clear and strong to me at the window. He was singing those words—
"'Twas a heaven below
My Redeemer to know;
And the angels could do nothing more,
Than to fall at his feet,
And the story repeat,
And the Lover of sinners adore.'
"I thought, it seemed that a band of angels came and carried those words up past my window! And the dawn came in my heart. I cannot tell you how,—I seemed to see everything at once. I saw what a heaven below it is, to know the love of Christ. I think my heart was something like the Ganges when the tide is coming in. I thought, if the angels could do nothing more than praise him, neither could I! I fell at his feet then—I do not think I have ever really left them since—not for long at a time; and since then my great wish has been to be allowed to glorify him. I have had no fears of anything in the way."
Eleanor had not been able to get through her "long story" without tears; but they came very much against her will. She could not see, yet somehow she felt the strong sympathetic emotion with which she was listened to. She could hear it, in the subdued intonation of Mr. Rhys's words.
"'Keep yourselves in the love of God.' How shall we do it, Eleanor?"
She answered without raising her eyes—"'The Lord is good unto them that wait for him.'"
"And, 'if ye keep my commandments, ye shall abide in my love.'"
There was silence a moment.
"That commandment must take me away for a while, Eleanor." She looked up.
"I thought," he said, with his sweet arch smile, "I might take so much of a honeymoon as one broken day—but there is a poor sick man a mile off who wants me; and brother Balliol has had the schooner affairs to attend to. I shall be gone an hour. Will you stay here? or shall I take you to the other house?"