Part 11 (1/2)
and he would give Dil a new and better chance in spite of her mother.
Dil drew a long, long breath.
”Can we all get to the pallis?” she asked, with a soft awe in her tone.
”Yes, there are many things to do-you will see what Christiana and Mercy did. And if you love the Lord Jesus and pray to him-”
Poor Dil was again conscience smitten. Only this morning she had said praying wasn't any good. She glanced up through tears,-
”'Pears as if I couldn't ever get to understand. I wasn't smart at school-”
”But you _are_ smart,” interposed Bess. ”An' now we've got the book we'll find just how Christiana went. There's only six months left.
You'll surely be back by April?”
”I shall be back.” His heart smote him. He was a coward after all. Ah, could he ever undertake any of the Master's business?
”Do you remember a hymn an old lady sang for you once?” he said, glad of even this faltering way out. ”I have been learning the words.”
”'Bout everlasting spring?” and Bess's eyes were alight. ”Oh, do please sing it! I'm in such an awful hurry for spring to come. Sometimes my breath gets so short, as if I reely couldn't wait.”
Dil raised her eyes with a slow, beseeching movement. He pushed a chair beside the wagon, and held Bess's small hands, that were full of leaping pulses.
The sweet old hymn, almost forgotten amid the clash of modern music. Ah, there was some one who would love and care for Dil in her desolation-his grandmother. He would write to her. Then he began, and at the first note the children were enraptured:-
”There is a land of pure delight, Where saints immortal reign; Infinite day excludes the night, And pleasures banish pain.
Oh, the transporting, rapturous scene, That dawns upon my sight; Sweet fields arrayed in living green, And rivers of delight.
There everlasting spring abides, And never-withering flowers; Death, like a narrow sea, divides This heavenly land from ours.
No chilling winds nor poisonous breath Can reach that blessed sh.o.r.e; Sickness and sorrow, pain and death, Are felt and feared no more.
O'er all those wide extended plains, s.h.i.+nes one eternal day; There Christ the Son forever reigns, And scatters night away.
Filled with delight, my raptured soul Can here no longer stay; Though Jordan's waves around me roll, Fearless I launch away.”
John Travis had a tender, sympathetic voice. Just now he was more moved by emotion than he would have imagined. Dil turned her face away and picked up the tears with her fingers. It was too beautiful to cry about, for crying was a.s.sociated with sorrow or pain. A great inarticulate desire thrilled through her, a blind, pa.s.sionate longing for a better, higher life, as if she belonged somewhere else. And, like Bess, an impatience pervaded her to be gone at once.
”Oh, please do sing it again!” besought Bess in a transport, her face spiritualized to a seraphic beauty. ”Did they sing like that in the Mission School, Dil?”
Dil shook her head in speechless ecstasy.
There was a knock, and then the door opened softly. It was Mrs. Murphy, with her sick baby in her arms.
”Ah, dear,” she began deprecatingly, with an odd little old country courtesy, ”I heard the singing, an' I said to poor old Mis' Bolan, 'That's never the Salvation Army, for they do make such a hullabaloo; but it must be a Moody an' Sankey man that I wunst haird, with the v'ice of an angel.' An' the pore craythur is a hankerin' to get nearer. Will ye lit her come down, plaise, or will ye come up?”
John Travis flushed suddenly. Dil glanced at her visitor aghast. Some finer instinct questioned whether he were offended. But he smiled. If it would give a poor old woman a pleasure-
Dil was considering a critical point. She had learned to be wise in evading the fury of a half-drunken woman. There were many things she kept to herself. But Mrs. Murphy would talk _him_ over. A Moody and Sankey man,-she had not a very clear idea; but if Mrs. Murphy knew, it might be wisdom to have some one here who would speak a good word for her if it should be needed.