"Don't you remember that day you and Willy went into the woods after blackberries, and how you lost your way groping in the twilight of the forest?" again whispered the angel, with his hand feeling all the time for the fountain. "You found an old lightning-blasted tree, and you sat down on it, and he put his arm round you just so, and said, 'Try and go to sleep, little sister.' But you couldn't, you were so thirsty; for you had walked full three miles. Who knows but what those children have, too?"
There was a little pause after the angel had said this, and then Miss Stebbins rose up and went into her pantry, where the shelves were all of immaculate whiteness, and she could see her face in the brightly scoured tin. She brought out a white pitcher, and, going into the garden, filled it at the spring. Returning, she poured some of the cool contents into a cup which stood on the table, and carried it to the children; and she really held it to the little girl's lips all the time she was drinking.
Farther and farther down in the heart of the woman crept the hand of the angel; nearer and nearer to the fountain it drew.
Miss Stebbins went back to her sewing, but, somehow, her fingers did not fly as nimbly as usual. The memories of bygone years were rising out of their mouldy sepulchres; but all freshly they came before her, with none of the grave's rust and dampness upon them.
"That little boy's eyes, when he thanked you for the water, looked just as Willy's used to," once more whispered the angel, bending down close to Miss Stebbins's ear. "And his hair looks like Willy's, too, as he sits there with that sunbeam brightening its gold, and his arm thrown so lovingly around his sister's waist. There! did you see how wistfully he looked up at the grapes, whose purple side are turned towards him as they hang over the portico? How Willy used to love grapes! And how sweet your bowls of bread and milk used to taste, after one of your rambles into the woods! If those children have walked as far as you did—and don't you see the little boy's coat and the little girl's faded dress are all covered with dust?—they must be very hungry, as well as tired and thirsty. Don't you remember that apple-pie you baked this morning? I never saw a pie done to a finer brown in my life. How sweet it would taste to those little tired things, if they could only eat a piece here in the parlor, where the flies and the sun wouldn't keep tormenting them all the time!"
A moment after, Miss Stebbins had stolen with noiseless step to her pantry, and, cutting out two generous slices from her apple-pie, she placed them in saucers, returned to the front door, and said to the children—
"You may come in here, and sit down on the stools by the fire-place and eat some pie; but you must mind and not drop any crumbs on the floor."
It was very strange, but that old harsh tone had almost left her voice. The large, tempting slices were placed in the little hands eagerly lifted up to receive them; and, at that moment, out from the lip of the fountain, out from the dust which lay heavy upon its seal, there came a single drop, and it fell down upon Miss Stebbins's heart. It was the first which had fallen there for years. Ah, the angel had found the fountain then!
The softened woman went back to her seat, and the angel did not bend down and whisper in her ear again; but all the time his hand was busy, very busy at its work.
"Where is your home, children?" inquired Miss Stebbins, after she had watched for a while, with a new, pleasant enjoyment, the children, as they dispatched with hungry avidity their pie.