“It is something that is so much a part of yourself,—that comes after you have your first nature—that it is as much your nature as if you were born first so,” answered Aunt Affy with pauses for clearness. “You feel as if you were born the second time, and it would be as hard to get rid of as though you were born the first time with it.”
“Carpet rags will never be my second nature,” sighed Judith, picking up a long, red strip. “I wish reading the Bible would.”
“Aunt Affy, it is only this,” began Marion, again, flushing a little with the effort of bringing her secret into spoken words. “I want somebody to do good to; I have my class in Sunday school, and that is a great deal, but it doesn’t satisfy—and there must be somebody; if it were not so, I wouldn’t be so hungry to do it. I say it with all humility; I know there is something in me to give, and it is growing. But I don’t know how to find somebody.”
Judith’s fingers dropped the long, red strip; it would be a story to hear Aunt Affy tell Miss Marion how to find somebody.
“Then, you are just ready to hear my story.”
“I knew you had it; I saw it in your face.”
“It is one of the true stories, the stories as true as Bible stories, that you and I are living every day.”
How Judith’s face glowed. Was _she_ living a true story? As real as the Bible stories?
“God helps and hears now, as quickly, as willingly, as sufficiently, as he did in the old Bible times; we live in the new Bible times. I heard a woman once wishing for a _new_ Bible, the old Bible seemed written so long ago, and about people who lived so long ago. We are making a new Bible; our life is a new Acts of the Disciples.”
And she was in it? How could Judith think of carpet rags? Unless carpet rags were in it, too.
“I like that,” said Marion, “for Acts has been called the Gospel of the Risen Lord, and we know He _is_ risen, and with us in the Holy Spirit.”
Aunt Affy was silent a moment; like Judith her fingers stayed and would not work.
“Yes,” she said, too satisfied to say another word.
“Aunt Affy’s Bible is full of marks and dates,” said Judith, “as if she were writing her new Bible in her old one.”
“Now I’ll tell you how I found somebody. I wanted somebody to give to, as you do. I felt full of good things to give. The village was more full of young people then; now the boys go to the city, or away off somewhere, then they stayed and married village girls. There were people enough, but I did not know how to find the one willing to take something from me. So I prayed about it: my giving, and the somebody. The first thing I learned when I began to live in the Bible was to pray about everything as Bible folks did—I wanted to do all the right things they did, and shape my life as near to God as some of them did.”