"And the minister?" I asked, for her calmness was infectious.
"Oh, either of them, love," she said; "they are both good men, and they must arrange to suit their own convenience. Now give me a kiss. I am so glad to have got this done, and though I am tired I feel ever so much better."
I saw the lawyer in the afternoon, and he called with the draft on the following day, and by the next it had been signed, witnessed and completed.
Mother Hubbard did not go to chapel on the Sunday, but on the Thursday she expressed her fixed determination to take her class. I protested in vain; the motherkin had made up her mind.
"I must, love; it is laid upon me, and I am not at all excited."
"But, dear," I urged, "I shall worry terribly whilst you are out of my care. You are not fit to go--you are not strong enough."
"It is only a step, love," she replied, "and the evening is warm; why need you worry when you can come with me?"
She had never suggested this before--indeed, when I had laughingly suggested it she had been visibly alarmed, and I admit that the idea was not attractive. Somehow or other I distrusted the Methodist class meeting. But my love for the class leader prevailed.
"Very well," I said; "if you go, I go too."
We went together and found eight or nine women of various ages assembled in the little vestry. Mother Hubbard took her seat at the table, and I sat next to Widow Smithies, who moved up to make room for me.
We sang a hymn, and then Mother Hubbard prayed--prayed in a gentle voice which had much humility in it, but an assured confidence which showed her to be on intimate terms with her Lord; and when she had finished I read the 103rd Psalm at her request, and we sang again.
Then she spoke, and her voice gathered strength as she proceeded. I cannot write down all she said, but some of the sentences are burned into my memory, though the connections have escaped me.
"We will not have an experience meeting to-night, my friends, because I want to speak to you, and God has given me strength to do so. I am weak in body, but my spirit was never stronger. It is the spirit which is the real life, so I was never more alive. I have thought a good deal lately on those words:
"'Even the youths shall faint and be weary, and the young men shall utterly fall. But they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength: they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run and not be weary; they shall walk and not faint.'