There was a stir now, and the spell of silence was broken; while Jessica, forgetful of everything but her deep love for him, ran swiftly up the steps and touched him timidly with her hand. The minister neither spoke nor moved.
The great congregation was in a tumult instantly, standing up, and talking, and crying out with hysterical sobs, and pushing out of their pews, and thronging towards the pulpit. In a few minutes the minister was carried down into the vestry, and the crowd gathered about the door of it. Some of the chief men belonging to the chapel urged the congregation to disperse and return to their homes; but they were too much excited to leave before it was known what had befallen the minister.
Jessica pushed her way--being small and nimble, and used to crowds--to the very door of the vestry, where Daniel stood to guard it from being invaded by too many strangers; and she waited there beside him until the door was opened by a hand-breadth, and a physician whispered from within, “It is not death, but a stroke.”
More quickly than the words could be carried from lip to lip among the crowd Jessica glided through the midst to the pew where the minister’s children were kneeling, with arms about one another, sobbing out inarticulate prayers to God. She stood for a moment beside them, scarcely knowing what to say, and then she fell down on her knees by Winny, and put her lips close to her ear.
“Miss Winny,” she said with a trembling voice, “the doctor says it’s nothing but a stroke. He isn’t taken with death, Miss Jane; it’s only a stroke.”
The children started up eagerly and caught Jessica’s hands, clinging to her as some one older and wiser than themselves. They had had no bitter taste of life’s troubles before this, for their mother had been taken from them before they were old enough to understand their loss, and their lives had been tenderly smoothed and cared for. That Jessica should bring them some intelligence and consolation in their sudden panic of dread invested her with a kind of superiority; so now they looked to her as one who could help and counsel them.
“What is a stroke, Jessica?” asked Jane, looking imploringly towards her with her white face.
“I don’t hardly know,” answered Jessica. “I know what strokes used to be when I lived with mother; but this is different, Miss Jane; this stroke comes from God, and it cannot be very bad.”
