Part 20 (2/2)

Desire repeated impulsively, and then shyly explained.

”And the new word?”

Desire shrunk into silence for a moment; she was not used to, or fond of Bible quoting, or even Bible talk; yet sin was hungering all the time for Bible truth.

Mr. Kincaid waited.

So she repeated it presently; for Desire never made a fuss; she was too really sensitive for that.

”'The Tenderness in the midst of the Almightiness shall feed them, and shall lead them to living fountains of water.'”

Mr. Kincaid recognized the ”new word,” and his face lit up.

”'The Lamb in the midst of the Throne,'” he said. ”Out of the Heart of G.o.d, the Christ. Who was there before; the intent by which all things were made. The same yesterday, and to-day, and forever; who ever liveth to make intercession for us. Christ _had to be_. The Word, full of grace, must be made flesh. Why need people dispute about Eternity and Divinity, if they can only see that?--Was that Mrs. Froke's reading?”

”Yes; that was Rachel's sermon.”

”It is an illumination.”

They walked all up Orchard Street without another word.

Then Kenneth Kincaid said,--”Miss Desire, why won't you come and teach in the Mission School?”

”I teach? Why, I've got everything to learn!”

”But as fast as you _do_ learn; the morsels, you know. That is the way they are given out. That is the wonder of the kingdom of heaven.

There is no need to go away and buy three hundred pennyworth before we begin, that every one may take a little; the bread given as the Master breaks it feeds them till they are filled; and there are baskets full of fragments to gather up.”

Kenneth Kincaid's heart was in his Sunday work, as his sister had said. The more gladly now, that the outward daily bread was being given.

Mr. Geoffrey,--one of those busy men, so busy that they do promptly that which their hands find to do,--had put Kenneth in the way of work. It only needed a word from him, and the surveying and laying out of some new streets and avenues down there where Boston is growing so big and grand and strange, were put into his charge.

Kenneth was busy now, cheerily busy, from Monday morning to Sat.u.r.day night; and restfully busy on the Sunday, straightening the paths and laying out the ways for souls to walk in. He felt the harmony and the ill.u.s.tration between his week and his Sunday, and the one strengthening the other, as all true outward work does harmonize with and show forth, and help the spiritual doing. It could not have been so with that gold work, or any little feverish hitching on to other men's business; producing nothing, advancing nothing, only standing between to s.n.a.t.c.h what might fall, or to keep a premium for pa.s.sing from hand to hand.

Our great cities are so full,--our whole country is so overrun,--with these officious middle-men whom the world does not truly want; chiffonniers of trade, who only pick up a living out of the great press and waste and overflow; and our boys are so eager to slip in to some such easy, ready-made opportunity,--to get some crossing to sweep.

What will come of it all, as the pretenses multiply? Will there be always pennies for every little broom? Will two, and three, and six sweeps be tolerated between side and side? By and by, I think, they will have to turn to and lay pavements. Hard, honest work, and the day's pay for it; that is what we have got to go back to; that and the day's snug, patient living, which the pay achieves.

Then, as I say, the week shall ill.u.s.trate the Sunday, and the Sunday shall glorify the week; and what men do and build shall stand true types, again, for the inner growth and the invisible building; so that if this outer tabernacle were dissolved, there should be seen glorious behind it, the house not made with hands,--eternal.

As Desire Ledwith met this young Kenneth Kincaid from day to day, seeing him so often at her Aunt Ripwinkley's, where he and Dorris went in and out now, almost like a son and daughter,--as she walked beside him this morning, hearing him say these things, at which the heart-longing in her burned anew toward the real and satisfying,--what wonder was it that her restlessness grasped at that in his life which was strong and full of rest; that she felt glad and proud to have him tell his thought to her; that without any silliness,--despising all silliness,--she should yet be conscious, as girls of seventeen are conscious, of something that made her day sufficient when she had so met him,--of a temptation to turn into those streets in her walks that led his way? Or that she often, with her blunt truth, toward herself as well as others, and her quick contempt of sham and subterfuge, should snub herself mentally, and turn herself round as by a grasp of her own shoulders, and make herself walk off stoutly in a far and opposite direction, when, without due need and excuse, she caught herself out in these things?

What wonder that this stood in her way, for very pleasantness, when Kenneth asked her to come and teach in the school? That she was ashamed to let herself do a thing--even a good thing, that her life needed,--when there was this conscious charm in the asking; this secret thought--that she should walk up home with him every Sunday!

She remembered Agatha and Florence, and she imagined, perhaps, more than they would really have thought of it at home; and so as they turned into Shubarton Place,--for he had kept on all the way along Bridgeley and up Dorset Street with her,--she checked her steps suddenly as they came near the door, and said brusquely,--

”No, Mr. Kincaid; I can't come to the Mission. I might learn A, and teach them that; but how do I know I shall ever learn B, myself?”

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