"Ah, you will forget all the bodily suffering when the glorious day of your release comes, you will then own with trembling joy, that it was good for you to have been thus afflicted. But where is Rachel, Jones?" he continued, looking round the room. "In your helpless state, you cannot well be left alone."
"Please, sir, mother is gone to Storby to buy bread," said the little girl. "She left me to take care of neighbour Francis, during her absence."
"How long has she been away?"
"Since the morning."
"And my poor old friend has not been turned in his bed all day?"
"Ah, it's very weary lying in the one position for so many hours," sighed the paralyzed man. "But I have borne it as patiently as I could."
Stepping up to the bed, Mr. Fitzmorris raised the sufferer in his strong arms, adjusted his pillows comfortably, and turned him gently on his side, with his face to the open door, that he might be refreshed with a view of the country beyond. Then taking a little flask from his carpet-bag, he gave him a glass of wine, and handing another bottle to Dorothy, he told her to go into the next house, and warm the broth it contained at Martha Brown's fire. When Dorothy returned with a bowl of rich broth, she found the vicar sitting on the bed, reading to the old man from a small pocket Bible. The rapt look of devotion in the sick man's face, and the heavenly expression which played like a glory round the calm brow of the vicar would have made a study for a painter.
Dorothy paused in the door-way to contemplate it. To her it was a living picture of beauty—and when, after the chapter was concluded, and in his sweet solemn manner, Mr. Fitzmorris said, "Let us pray," she knelt down by the humble bed, and upon the broken floor, and prayed with all her heart.
What a simple touching prayer it was that flowed from those gracious lips; it seemed to embody the spiritual wants of all present—but when, on rising from his knees, Mr. Fitzmorris proceeded to feed the old man, who was utterly incapable of helping himself, she could not restrain her tears.
"Oh, let me do that," she said.