“I am so thankful you had my letter in time,” Virginia said softly. “We did not think then—”
“Your letter! Oh, _did_ you write? My darling, thank you! You shame me with your trust, your sweet readiness to forgive. But I have hardly been at home these two days. I think,” and his voice fell to a reverent inflection, “that God was watching over it all, and guiding our steps. It is a long story, and some day you shall hear it all, but in infinite pathos Dilsey Quinn’s far exceeds it. Our whole lives will be more sacred to us for this remembrance. But I cannot bear to have her go. Is it as the nurse said?”
Virginia made a sign with her bowed head.
“I hoped so to give her a better, brighter life. I left a little work for her in the hands of a friend, and it came to naught. But perhaps—God’s love _must_ be wiser than our human plans, and his love is greater. We must rest content with that. But she has been an evangel to me.”
Miss Mary bathed the face and hands of her invalid in some fragrant water. She had considered Dil a rather dull and uninteresting child at first; but her pitiful story that had come to light in fragments, her passionate love for her little “hurted” sister, and her wild dream of going to heaven, had moved them all immeasurably. The cheerful sweetness would have deceived any but practised eyes, and even now Dil seemed buoyed up by her delicious happiness.
“Won’t they come back?” she asked presently, with a touch of longing in her voice.
The household had not been disturbed by the near approach of the awesome visitant. The children had not missed her, since she had brought no gayety to them, but rather grudged Miss Virginia to her. They were at their supper now. How easily they had forgotten the hardships of their lives!
Virginia and John Travis entered presently. The soft summer night fell about them, as they sat watching the frail little body, so wasted that its vitality was fast ebbing. She talked in quaint, disjointed snatches, piecing the year’s story together with a pathos almost heart-breaking in its very simplicity. Her trust in him had been so perfect.
“I don’t know what’s ’come o’ mother,” she said, after one of the silences. “But Bess ’n’ me’ll tell the Lord Jesus ’bout her, ’n’ mebbe he can do somethin’ that’ll keep her ’way from Mrs. MacBride’s, ’cause she wasn’t so bad before she took to goin’ there. I’ve been so feared of her all the time, but I don’t feel feared no more. Bess said we shouldn’t when you came back, and wisht your name had been Mr. Greatheart. We liked him so. But they’ve all gone wrong in Barker’s Court. Oh, can’t some one set thim right an’ straight, an’ bring thim outen the trouble an’ drinkin’ an’ beatin’, an’ show thim the way? It’s jes’ like thim folks leavin’ the City of Destruction. An’ oh, we’ve all come out of it, Owny an’ little Dan. Maybe mother’ll find the way.”