On the lounge in the sitting-room, Judith lay cuddled up with a rare ailment for her, a throbbing headache; Aunt Affy had brought a pillow from her own entry bedroom, and bathed her forehead with Florida water; then brushed her hair for a long time and told her a story about her far-away girlhood, “when Becky and Cephas and I had our good times. Not that we don’t have good times now; Becky has hers up yonder, and poor Cephas and I do the best we can for each other down here.”

Judith wondered why she should say “poor Cephas”; he had laughing eyes, and a merry laugh, and everything that happened to him seemed just the very best thing that could happen.

Aunt Rody had brewed a bowl of bitter stuff and stood threateningly near while Judith lifted her dizzy head and forced herself to taste it.

“More,” urged Aunt Rody.

She tasted again.

“More,” insisted Aunt Rody.

She tasted several times with a look of pitiful appeal that Aunt Rody resisted.

“More,” commanded Aunt Rody.

“I can’t,” sobbed Judith, but she obeyed, and Aunt Rody set the yellow bowl on a chair by the sofa, that she might taste it whenever she felt like it.

Homesick Judith hid her face in the small pillow as soon as she was left alone, and cried; she cried for her mother not a year dead, for her father whom she scarcely remembered, for the pretty room she had with her mother in her own city home, for her picture of the Madonna with the child, that Aunt Rody declared popish and would not suffer, even in Judith’s own room; then she cried because Miss Kenney had not come yesterday, as she half promised, and then because Aunt Rody had made Cephas say that she should not run about in the fields with him, but stay in the house these wonderful days and sew carpet rags; and then, if she cried about anything she cried in her sleep; a soft step was in the room, the lightest touch covered her with Aunt Affy’s fleecy white shawl.

“Sit down,” whispered Aunt Affy’s voice, “she is fast asleep; she is a good sleeper, we shall not disturb her; I shouldn’t wonder if she had fits of home-sickness; she never tells; we are all old folks; Rody thinks she doesn’t need any more schooling because she can do sums and writes such a handsome hand, so she doesn’t go to school—and doesn’t know many young folks. Rody never did understand young folks, you know that.”

“I should think you knew that,” replied the other whispering, indignant voice. “So Cephas is back again; he was gone five years, wasn’t he?”

“Five this last time, three the other time.”

Judith stirred, pushed the white wool away from her face, and listened.

“He was good to go,” replied the still indignant voice.

Judith made a soft rustle; Aunt Affy did not heed it.

“Yes, he was good,” assented Aunt Affy’s sweet, old voice, “he is always ready to do the thing that’s happiest for me. He was so homesick and wrote such heart-rending letters that I couldn’t stand it. Rody sniffed, as she has always sniffed at us, but she said he might come back if we were both so set on it, so shamelessly set on it.”

Judith’s little protesting groan was not noticed; then she shut her eyes and listened, because she could not help it.

“It’s a burning shame, and the sister you have been to her, too. You took your money and bought your sisters out that you might keep the old place for Rody.”

“I wanted it for myself, too,” was Aunt Affy’s honest reply.

“But you could have taken your money and married Cephas—”

“But, you see, she never could bear the thought of my marrying at all; she doesn’t dislike Cephas so much, but she wants me all to herself. She doesn’t like men, I’ll allow that; she never had any kind of happy experience herself, unless it happened before I was born, and she doesn’t know. After Becky died, Cephas and I had to comfort each other; Rody never was a great hand at comforting, and the other girls were all dead or married. She had been a mother to me all my life; I was a two week’s old baby left in her care; and Becky was only two years old; we were her two babies.”

“You had whippings and scoldings enough thrown in, I’ll be bound,” was the visitor’s tart rejoinder.

“The scoldings are thrown in now,” said Aunt Affy, with the glimmer of a smile; “I am only a girl to her; I shall never grow up to her; not old enough to be married, sixty years old as I am. Cephas told her yesterday that he would fix up the old house with his own money, he has considerable laid by, and she dared him to pull off a shingle or drive a nail. He said she should always be the head of the house, and she said there was no need for him to tell her that. You see that we could not be happy in making her old age unhappy. She is so old that defiance might kill her; she is eighty-four.”

“I’d let it kill her then,” said Miss Affy’s life-long friend.

“No, you wouldn’t. Your sister is your sister, and she is all the mother I ever knew. Cephas and I jog on together like two old married folks. She says we will be glad when she is under the sod and we can have our own way.”

“She might let you have it now, and then you wouldn’t be glad,” urged Jean Draper’s mother.

“She cannot let us have it; her own will is too strong for her; when she gives up to us she will die.”

“Then I’d do it anyway,” counselled the other voice.

“We did talk of that, but we are afraid to—she is so old,” whispered Aunt Affy, feeling faint with the very thought of it.

“Well, it’s an old folks’ romance, and I didn’t know old folks had any,” said the woman who was married at sixteen.

But the girl on the lounge with her face in the pillow had listened; she had listened and learned something Aunt Affy would not have told her for the world.

How could she ever look into Aunt Affy’s face again? And, oh, how could she ever love Aunt Rody?

She groaned, and Aunt Affy came to her and asked if she felt worse. The neighbor went out on tiptoe; Aunt Rody came from the kitchen to stand threateningly near while Aunt Affy coaxed mouthful by mouthful the draining of the bitter bowl.

While Aunt Rody was taking her nap that afternoon Jean Draper knocked on the open kitchen door. Judith and Aunt Affy were washing dishes together at the kitchen sink; Judith gave a cry of pleased surprise at the sound of the knock and the vision of the girl in the doorway.

“O, Jean, I wished for you,” she said, with the longing for young companionship in her heart.

“And I wanted you. I am going to see Miss Marion on a secret errand, and I can’t do it without you. Can you spare her, Miss Affy?”

“If her head will let her go,” began Miss Affy, doubtfully.

“Oh, that’s well,” cried Judith, joyfully, “but what will Aunt Rody say?” she questioned in dismay.

“I will take care of that,” promised Aunt Affy, anticipating with dread the half hour’s scolding the permission would bring upon herself.

“You are making her a gad-about just like yourself,” the monologue would begin.

“Are you sure, Aunt Affy, dear?” asked Judith, anxiously.

“Yes, sure. Run away and put on your new gingham.”

XIII. THE TWO BLESSED THINGS.

“My life is like Africa; there are no paths anywhere,” said Marion. She was not petulant; the tone was not petulant; Marion knew she thought she was bearing her life bravely. The study was cool and darkened that August afternoon; she lay idly upon the lounge, a fresh magazine in her lap, and a pile of books on the carpet within reach of her idle hands.

A year ago she thought she loved books—and music, and life.

Roger liked to have her near him while he wrote and studied, but he did not like her idle moods. This latest one had lasted two days.

He pushed his large volume away, and taking up an ivory paper cutter began to run its sharp edges across his fingers. Marion was easily hurt; he could not advise work as he did yesterday.

“If your life were like Africa,” he began in an unsuggestive tone, “you would have a beaten track wherever you turned; no unmapped country in the world is better supplied with paths than this same Africa that your hedged-in life is like. Every village is connected with some other village by a path; you can follow ziz-zag paths from Zanzibar to the Atlantic; they are beaten as hard as adamant; they are made by centuries of native traffic.”

“I have learned something about Africa,” she answered, demurely, “if not about my life.”

“Which are you the more interested in?”

“Oh, Africa, just now. I am not interested in my life at all.”

“Marion, dear, is Bensalem a failure?”

“Yes, as far as I am concerned. Not for you, dear old boy; it is splendid for you, and for Bensalem. Even Judith listens in church.”

“I know she does. I write my sermons for her.”

“For a girl? How do you expect to reach other people, then?” she inquired, surprised.

“The inspiration came to me, that Sunday she told me she was sorry for not listening, to begin all over again—to look at life from a fresh standpoint, from the standpoint of youth, ardent, hungry, sensation-loving youth—”

“Sensation—”

“Not in its usual acceptation; truth cannot but give you a sensation; I knew it would not hurt the old people and the middle-aged to begin again; to enter the Kingdom of Heaven as a little child, and I have attempted to teach the children in the Kingdom of Heaven; to talk simply about the grand old truths; to keep that girl before me as I thought out my sermons—a thoughtful girl who has had some experience in life, and when a thought or the expression of it was over her head, I struck it out.”

“Now I know your secret. ‘Simplicity and strength’ are your characteristics, David Prince, our literary blacksmith, who wrote Bensalem up for the Dunellen News, was pleased to say. Shall you keep this up?”

“Until I find a better way,” he said, contentedly.

“Everybody listens.”

“Even Miss Rody,” he said, smiling at the memory of Miss Rody’s face.

“And all the other old folks. Old folks and children. What about the young men and maidens?”

“Aren’t ‘simplicity and strength’ good enough for them?” he inquired, seriously.

“It’s good enough for me.”

“Not quite,” he answered.

“Why?”

“You listen, of course.”

“But I do not grow fast enough? Roger, I’ve stopped growing. I knew something was the matter with me, and that’s it.”

“A pretty serious it.”

“I know that better than you can tell me. I wish Judith Grey Mackenzie—how Aunt Rody brings that out—would give me an inspiration.”

“Bring her here for a week and I’ll promise that she will.”

“Aunt Affy could not spare her. Her yellow head is the sunshine of that old house. But I’ll have her some day. I wish I owned her.”

“I wish you did. I would buy her myself if I had money enough.”

“I wonder who does own her,” said Marion; “I forgot that she does not belong to anybody.”

“She does belong to somebody. Her mother gave her to Aunt Affy.”

Perhaps she belonged somewhat to her “Cousin Don.”

Roger never talked about Don. He never read aloud to her the foreign letters she saw so often on the study table.

A sigh came of itself before she could stifle it; the idle fingers opened the magazine; Roger’s pen began to race across the paper. Voices on the piazza brought Marion to her feet; Judith’s voice was in the hall.

“O, Miss Marion, we came to tell you—” began Judith.

“And to ask you how—” continued Jean.

“To make an Outing Ten,” finished Judith.

At the tea-table Marion told Roger the story of how Jean had an outing.

“I wish you might have heard the unconscious way she told it. My life is like Africa: all beaten tracks. I am to be the President of the Outing Ten. All Bensalem is to be my own special private outing, but nobody is to know it.”

“Then, Marion dear, you will have the two most blessed things on the earth.”

“What are they?”

“Don’t you know?”

“You think work is one,” she said doubtfully.

“So you think. And companionship is the other.”

“Roger, dear, I’m afraid I haven’t given you companionship; I’ve been stupid, self-absorbed, idle—”

“Anything else?”

“But you have been desolate, sometimes.”

“My work has been my companionship.”

“Then there is only one blessed thing to you,” she said, merrily. “May you get it.”

“I am getting it every day.”

“Then you do not inwardly fret against the limitations of this bit of a village—” she began, frightened at herself for the suggestion: “I thought, perhaps, you were bearing Bensalem.”

“So I am, I hope,” he answered, gravely, “in my heart, and in my prayers.”

“I beg your pardon,” she returned, flushing under the “splendid purpose in his eyes.” “I might have known you were too broad to feel narrowed, as I do.”

“You remember what Lowell says: ‘There are few brains that would not be better for living for a while on their own fat.’”

“And that is better than the fat of the land—which you will never get in Bensalem.”

“I think I started from my new standpoint without worldly ambition. Think of Paul writing the Epistle to the Romans from a literary point of view.”

“Well, then,” with a laugh that was half a grumble, “I despair of you, if you ‘take pleasure’ as he did in all sorts of infirmities and limitations—I was beginning to be ambitious for you. You spent all the afternoon last week with Agnes Trembly’s mother, reading to her, and telling her stories—you do not take time to study as you used to study. You were such a student. Now all you care for is people—and the Bible,” she ran on, discontentedly; “What does Don think of you?” she asked, with a sudden flush.

“He is in despair,” he replied, thinking of Don’s latest letter of angry expostulation.

“He is ambitious,” said Marion, reproachfully.

“So am I,” he answered, smiling at the reproach.

“But in such a way. I like ambition. I would like to do something in the world myself.”

“The man, or woman, or child, who does the will of God is every day doing something in the world,” he said, seriously.

For a moment she was silenced, then urged by her own discontent she burst out:—

“But five hundred or a thousand people might as well listen to you, and be influenced by your ‘strength and simplicity,’ as this handful of Bensalem.”

“The perfect Teacher was more than once content with but one listener.”

“Yes; but his sermon was written and handed down to all the ages,” she answered, in a flash.

“If one life here in Bensalem is moved, and another life moved by that, who can tell how far down the ages the influence may go? Beside, that is not my care,” he said, in his rested voice.

“But wouldn’t you, now, candidly, rather influence ten hundred lives than one hundred?”

“Candidly, I would.”

“And, yet, you have refused a call to Maverick, and stay stupidly here.”

“Stupidly is your own interpretation. I will be content to move one man if I might choose the man. I am determined to learn what can be done in a village by one man who stays for the ‘fat of the land,’ the youth. From Drummond’s standpoint, only the boy himself and the young man understand the boy. My outlook just now is from the standpoint of that big-eyed, sensitive-lipped Joe, and your Judith. Men and women are but boys and girls grown tall. I find out the boy; you are helping me to the girl.”

“I am glad I can help,” said Marion, satisfied.

XIV. AN AFTERNOON WITH AN ADVENTURE IN IT.

It was rag-carpet afternoon; it was also another kind of an afternoon, an afternoon with an adventure in it, and Judith longed for adventures; but, of course, all she knew, at first, was the rag-carpet; the adventure was to happen in the kitchen, and the rag-carpet ball was happening in Aunt Affy’s room.

Judith was a working member of the Outing Ten, but if her outing meant this rag-carpet ball it was very discouraging, and if it were not for the pleasure of telling the President about the rag-carpet, she thought she would resign and become member of a ten that had more fun in it.

But then, Miss Marion was doing this kind of thing herself, things she did not like to do about the house, for she had sent away her servant and was doing all the work excepting washing and ironing, and, perhaps, in the village, too, she was doing uncongenial errands; but, of course, she would never tell the Outing Ten about that; she was going out to tea and making calls, as she had said she never would do when she came to Bensalem, and she was taking her music back and practicing hours every day, and reading solid books, instead of novels; she had let books and music go for a while, Judith had heard her say to Aunt Affy, and that Jean Draper’s outing had been the blessing of her life. It was Nettie’s blessing, too; she told Marion she had an “outing” every day; she was patching a quilt and studying history.

The history study was a part of Marion’s outing, but the Ten did not know that.

Aunt Affy, wearing a calico loose gown of lilac and white, was seated in a rocker at the window combing her long gray hair: her hair was soft and thick, she twisted it into a coil, and behind her each ear she brushed a long curl.

Judith liked to twist these curls around her fingers when she talked to Aunt Affy.

“Only a little more to do,” encouraged Aunt Affy, giving her coil a firm twist.

Sitting on the matting at Aunt Affy’s feet the little girl began her weary work again.

“Aunt Affy! How did you get your name?” she inquired with the eagerness of something new to talk about.

“How did you get yours?” asked Aunt Affy, seriously.

“But mine is a real name.”

“Isn’t mine?”

“I never heard it before.”

“Some people have never heard of Judith.”

“That is true. Nettie never had.”

“Mine is in the Bible. So is Rody’s.”

“Is it? Well, I’ve never read the Bible through.”

“I will show it to you.”

“Aunt Affy, you and Aunt Rody never look in the glass when you comb your hair. You sit anywhere. It’s very funny.”

“When you have combed your hair sixty and eighty years you will not need to look in the glass,” was the serious reply.

“It isn’t sixty,” said literal Judith. “You did not do it when you were a baby.”

Taking her New Testament in large type from the small table near her, Aunt Affy found the place and laid it on the arm of her chair; Judith lifted herself and read where Aunt Affy’s finger pointed: “And to our beloved Apphia—but that isn’t Affy,” said astonished Judith.

“It grew down to it when I was a girl, and has never grown up. Shall I find Rody?”

Again Aunt Affy found the place, and Judith read. “‘And as Peter knocked at the door of the gate, a damsel came to hearken named Rhoda.’ That’s very funny,” she said, settling down among her rags.

“There were eight of us girls, and we all had Bible names: Rody, Dark, that was Dorcas, Mary, Marthy, Deborah, that’s your mother’s mother, Hanner, it is really Hannah, Becky, and Affy the youngest, is eight. Rody and I only are left. They were all married but Rody and Becky and me. Cephas was engaged to poor Becky, and she died; he went away after that, went South, went West, and at last came here; I wrote to him to come and finish his days with me. Rody wasn’t exactly pleased.”

“Why?” asked Judith, excited over the old folks’ romance.

“She doesn’t like new happenings, and she never had liked Cephas.”

“She scolds him,” said Judith, with a feeling of sympathy.

“She scolds me. She scolds the minister. It is only her way of talking.”

At that moment Aunt Rody’s blue gingham sunbonnet appeared at the window; Judith’s nervous fingers worked hurriedly.

“Not done yet. Jean Draper is worth two of you. The graham bread is out of the oven, a perfect bake, and I am going to call on Mrs. Evans, and take Nettie a custard.”

“Well,” said Aunt Affy.

Aunt Rody’s hair was white, but if it were soft to the touch, Judith’s fingers would never know; her black eyes were deep set, she had not one tooth, and her wrinkled lips had a way of keeping themselves sternly shut, unless they were sternly opened.

“Joe is hunting eggs; I hope he won’t get into mischief while I’m gone.”

“He hasn’t yet,” said Judith, Joe’s champion.

Joe, with his closely cut black hair, his grateful eyes, new gray suit with navy blue flannel shirt, rough shoes, willing and efficient ways, and his great love for Doodles, was some one not at all out of place on the “Sparrow farm;” even dainty Judith did not altogether disapprove his presence at the table.

The small disciple’s forehead was all in a pucker, and the blue eyes were so filled with tears that there was not room enough in her eyes for them; one tear kept pushing another down over her cheeks; they even rolled over her lips and tasted salt.

“Have you noticed the name on my new darning yarn?” inquired Aunt Affy, replacing the New Testament on the table.

“Superior quality,” read Judith, taking the card from the basket Aunt Affy brought to her lap from the table.

“No; on the top.”

“Dorcas,” read Judith.

“Dorcas. Who is that for?”

“The name of the man who made it,” replied Judith, stopping her dawdling and threading her needle.

“I think not.”

“His little girl’s name, perhaps,” ventured Judith.

“It may be, for aught I know; but I do not think that is the name of the wool.”

“Then I don’t know,” said Judith, interestedly.

“I know something and I will tell you. A long, long, long time ago, there was a little girl; I think she learned to sew when she was a little girl, for she knew how to sew beautifully, and her work was strong and did not rip easily. Perhaps she began by doing disagreeable things and then went on to other things until she learned how to make coats and garments for children and grown-up people. Her name was Dorcas.”

“Did the man who made the wool into yarn know about her?” asked Judith.

“I think so. Almost everybody does.”

“I never heard of her before. Is that all?”

“No; that is only the beginning. She was a disciple. And disciples always love each other and work for each other.”

“Do they?” asked Judith, her face glowing. Why, that was splendid and easy.

“And she worked for widows and perhaps for their little children, and they loved her dearly. But she died, and oh, how they grieved! They sent for another disciple, Peter; they thought he could help them. His faith was so great that he kneeled down and prayed; then he spoke to her, and she opened her eyes, and looked at him, and then she sat up. And then he called the people she had made coats and garments for, and in great joy they had her back alive again. God was willing for her to come back to earth and go on with her beautiful work. He cares for the work of his disciples, even when it is only using thread and needle.”

Judith’s curly head drooped over her hated work; she was so ashamed of behaving “ugly”; she hoped she had not behaved quite as ugly as she felt.

The ball was the required size at last, and she joyfully took it up in the garret to the barrel that was only half filled.

Then, aimlessly, she wandered into the kitchen, and there, odorously, temptingly, under a clean, coarse towel, were the two loaves of warm graham bread; she thought she cared for nothing in the way of bread, cake, or pudding as much as she cared for fresh graham bread and butter.

And Aunt Rody never would put it on the table fresh. For a slice of this she must wait until tomorrow night.

Lifting the coarse towel she peeped, then she touched; another touch brought a crumb, such a delicious crumb; another, and another, and another delicious crumb, and the crust of one end of a loaf was all picked off.

“Oh, deary me!” cried Judith, in dismay.

Then she covered it carefully, standing spellbound.

What would Aunt Rody say to her?

What would Aunt Rody do to her?

Afraid to go away and leave the bread that would tell its own story, afraid to stay with it, for Aunt Rody’s sunbonnet and heavy step might appear at any moment, she went to the sink to pump water over her hands and to decide what to do next.

Joe was on his way to the barn and stables to gather eggs; Aunt Rody had made a law that she should not go into any of the outbuildings without permission,—without her permission; in summer time there were “so many machines and things around, and children had a way of stepping into the jaws of death.” She missed hunting the eggs.

The gate swung to, there was a step on the flagged path; with her hands dripping, she flew up the kitchen stairs; on the landing she waited, breathless, to hear what Aunt Rody would say.

The step was in the kitchen, there was a pause,—Aunt Rody must be uncovering the bread; a smothered exclamation, then a quick, angry voice: “That Joe! He’s always doing something underhanded. He’s too fond of eating; I will not say one word, but he shall not have any of this graham bread, or the next, if I can help it. When he asks for it I’ll tell him before all the table-full that he knows why.”

The awful sentence was delivered in an awful voice; tearful and trembling, the culprit up the stairway heard every word; it was her dreadful secret, her guilty secret; she no more dared to rush down the stairs and confess the theft than she dared—she could not think of any comparison.

She fled through the large, unfurnished chamber, known as the store-room, to her own room, and there, bolting the door, threw herself upon the bed and wept as she had never wept before; because she had never been so wicked and frightened before. Joe would be punished for her sin; she would not dare confess if Aunt Rody starved him to death.

“Judith, Judith, come out on the piazza,” called Aunt Affy.

She peeped in the glass: her eyes were red, and her hair was tumbled; the latter was nothing new, she could sit in the hammock with her eyes away from Aunt Affy.

As she stepped from the sitting-room door to the piazza, Joe rushed around the corner of the house, an egg in each hand, frightened and out of breath.

“There’s an earthquake—in the southern part of Africa—and I’ve been in it; and I’m afraid the house will go in; oh, what shall we do? Mr. Brush is up in the field—”

“Stand still, Joe, and get some breath to talk with, and then tell us what has happened to you,” said Aunt Affy, quietly. Joe dropped on the piazza floor, still carefully holding the eggs.

“Will the house rock and come down, do you think, Aunt Affy, as the houses did in the book Judith read?”

“How did you get all that earth on your clothes and tear your shirt-sleeve?” Judith inquired, forgetting her red eyes in the latest adventure.

“In the earthquake; I went in almost up to my neck, but I held on with one hand and didn’t break the eggs.”

“Where was the earthquake?” she asked.

“In the sheep pen. I was looking for eggs, and the first I knew I felt the ground sliding, and I was going down—there was water, for I heard it splash. I thought you said fire was inside the earth; I went down into water. And I caught hold of something with one hand because I had two eggs in the other, and I pulled, and pulled, and pulled myself up and out.”

“Why, Joe, you poor boy,” exclaimed Aunt Affy, in alarm, “that old cistern has caved in at last, and you’ve been in it; you might have been drowned. What a mercy that you are safe. Don’t you go near that sheep pen again until Mr. Brush says you may.”

“I’ll never go near it again—I’ve had enough of it. I couldn’t scream—I tried to, but nobody heard. Are you sure it won’t cave in again, and get here, and swallow up the house?”

“That will not,” laughed Judith, “Oh, you queer boy.”

“Then may I have some bread and butter?” he asked, rising. “I think it will turn me crazy if it caves in again.”

“Aunt Rody is in the kitchen; tell her your story and ask her for the bread,” replied Aunt Affy.

Judith trembled so that she could scarcely stand; she dared not follow Joe; she dared not stay where she was: Aunt Rody herself made a way of escape for her by coming to the kitchen door with a slice of graham bread in her hand.

“Here, Joe: I heard your story. Here’s the bread. I hope you’ll behave yourself after this. Now, Judith, you see the reason I keep you from hunting eggs. You might be dead in that cistern this moment.”

“You couldn’t pull yourself up as I did,” remarked Joe, giving Aunt Rody the two eggs as she handed him the graham bread.

Judith drew a long breath of relief. Now she need never tell; Joe would not be punished.

That evening at family prayer Cephas read about the institution of the Lord’s Supper and the betrayal of Christ: Joe shuffled his feet until a look from Aunt Rody quieted him; Judith looked as if she were listening, but she did not catch the meaning of a single sentence until something arrested her rapid, remorseful thinking: “And when they had kindled a fire in the midst of the hall, and were set down together, Peter sat down among them. But a certain maid beheld him as he sat by the fire, and earnestly looking upon him, and said, This man was also with him. And he denied him, saying: Woman I know him not.”

Peter was afraid. He was afraid to tell that woman. The small disciple looked at the old lady sitting in her high straight-backed chair, with her long hands so still in her lap, her lips tight shut, her eyes roving from Joe to Judith, and then to Joe, then the dreadful round again, and she thought the woman that frightened Peter must have been like Aunt Rody.

She knew how afraid Peter was.

She did not hear one word of the long prayer; she knelt near Aunt Rody; she tried not to sob, or to be afraid, but she was afraid; not now of being found out, but afraid that she was wicked. As long as she lived she would never dare to tell.

And she never did tell, not as long as Aunt Rody lived.

For many a day her heart was heavy with the sin of allowing the innocent to be suspected; but she was not a very brave small disciple.

One night at prayers she surprised them all by saying suddenly and vehemently: “I don’t care if Peter was so wicked; I like him better than anybody in the whole Bible.”

XV. “FIRST AT ANTIOCH.”

It was Saturday afternoon; Judith had been busy in the kitchen all the morning with Aunt Rody, and she (not Aunt Rody) had kept her temper; that was one happening that made the day memorable and delightful, and then there were three others: one was her miracle, another the maidens that were going out to draw water, and the disciple from Antioch, and, most memorable of all, the plan for boarding-school.

The miracle happened in this way: Aunt Rody sent her to take a basket of things to Nettie Evans, a “Sunday surprise,” Judith called it; tiny biscuits, jelly cake, and a little round box of figs.

Nettie had had a wearisome day (very much more dreadful than a Saturday morning in the kitchen with Aunt Rody, Judith told herself), and Mrs. Evans thought it better for her not to go up to Nettie’s room, for the pain in her back was better, she had fallen asleep and she was afraid to have her disturbed.

“May I get a drink of water?” Judith asked. She always felt thirsty when she came near the plank that formed the ascent from the ground where the kitchen had been to the bit of floor that was left for the sink to stand on. The old kitchen had been torn down this summer, and nothing remained of it excepting the sink which contained the pump (the water came from the well where Nettie’s lilies grew), the window over the sink, the roof overhead, and the walls on each side of the sink. She liked the fun of running up and down this plank, and she liked to stand and look out of this window toward the east. It was a window toward the east. Sometimes she thought about the Jews praying toward the east. She wished once that something would happen to this window because it was a window toward the east. A window facing the east in a house was not at all remarkable; but a window that was not in a house brought itself into very interesting prominence.

And this afternoon her something happened. There was a wonder in the heavens.

It was afternoon; she knew it was, she was sure of it; dinner was over hours ago; Aunt Rody had helped her wipe the dinner dishes, and Aunt Affy had gone to town with Uncle Cephas to take the week’s butter to her customers; and she was on her way to the parsonage to sing hymns with Miss Marion, the hymns for church to-morrow, and she never went till afternoon. But there it was. The sun was in the east in the afternoon; round, peering through mist with a pale, yellow splendor; she saw something that no one in the world had ever seen. It was the sun rising in the afternoon.

It must be a miracle; a miracle in the window towards Jerusalem.

But the sun surely had not stood still ever since morning; it was high up when she stood in the back yard and rang the dinner bell for Uncle Cephas and Joe.

Was it a miracle just for her?

That was the east; it had been the east ever since she was born; it had been the east ever since the the world was made; and it was the sun.

It was nothing to see the full moon in the east; the last time she went driving with Miss Marion and Mr. Roger they saw the full moon in the east and he talked about it. This was not the full moon.

“Mrs. Evans, Mrs. Evans, quick, quick,” she called, excitedly, fearing that her miracle would vanish.

Hurried steps crossed the new kitchen and Mrs. Evans appeared.

“What is it, child? Don’t wake Nettie.”

“Look,” said Judith, with the dignity of a youthful prophetess, pointing to the apparition; “see the sun in the east in the afternoon.”

Mrs. Evans stepped up the plank, and looked. It was the sun in the east in the afternoon.

“Well, I declare!” ejaculated Mrs. Evans, “that does beat all I ever saw. Where did it come from? How could it get there?” Startled, she turned, and toward the west, there was the big, round sun shining in all his glory.

“Oh, I see,” with a breath of relief; “I thought the world must be coming to an end. It is the reflection. Look, don’t you see? the sun is opposite the window. But it is a wonderful sight. I wish it would stay until I could call the neighbors in.”

Judith looked at the west and reasoned about it; she turned toward the east, then to the west, then to the window again.

“So it is,” with an inflection of disappointment.

Mrs. Evans laughed softly and hurried back to the new kitchen.

Judith pumped her glass of water with the radiance of two suns in her face.

“Little girl, little girl,” called a voice from a buggy in the road, “will you direct me to the parsonage?”

“Go on straight up the hill, turn to the right and see the church; the next house is the parsonage,” she replied with ready exactness.

“Thank you,” said a second voice, with a foreign accent; the face bent forward was very dark, with dark eyes, and dark beard.

Half an hour afterward she found Miss Marion in her own room, and before they went down to the parlor to the piano, she and Miss Marion read together in First Samuel.

They were reading the Bible through together; Marion told her brother that it was a revelation to her to read the Bible with a girl, and an old woman; it was looking forward and looking backward.

Judith read her three verses and then gave a joyful exclamation:—

“‘And as they went up the hill to the city, they found young maidens going out to draw water, and said unto them: Is the seer here?

“‘And they answered them and said, He is, behold he is before you; make haste, now, for he came to-day to the city, for there is a sacrifice of the people to-day in the high place; as soon as ye be come into the city, ye shall straightway find him, before he go up to the high place to eat, for the people will not eat until he come, because he doth bless the sacrifice; and afterwards they eat that be bidden. Now, therefore, get you up; for about this time ye shall find him.’ Oh, Miss Marion, that is like me. I was getting a drink of water and I sent two men to find the Bensalem seer.”

“Even Saul couldn’t find the way without the maidens,” reflected Marion.

“And they were put in the story for all the world to read about; I wish people wouldn’t forget about girls now-a-days.”

“Who does?” asked Marion; “this is the girls’ century.”

“Nobody ever thinks about me. I am never in things like the other girls. Aunt Rody will never let me go anywhere; Aunt Affy coaxed her one day, and cried and said she was spoiling my girlhood, but Aunt Rody was worse than ever after that. I cry night after night because she will not let me go to boarding-school. Boarding-school has been the dream of my life; I make pictures about it to myself. Did you go to boarding-school?”

“Yes, for one year, and was glad enough to go home again. I wish you would come to school to me; do you suppose you could?” asked Marion with a sudden and joyous inspiration.

“O, Miss Marion,” was all the girl could reply for very gladness.

“We will plan about it, Roger and I. If you can come and stay all day and study, and take music lessons, three or four days a week, it will be better than boarding-school for you, and more than you can think for me. You have been on my mind, but I didn’t dare propose anything; I knew Aunt Affy would not be allowed to have her way.”

Both Judith’s arms were about Marion’s neck, with her face hidden on Marion’s shoulder.

“I’ve wanted a sister all my life,” she said laughing and crying together.

Sunday morning on entering church her attention was arrested by a large map stretched across the platform, or half-way across it; the pulpit had been removed and in its stead were flowers, a row of pink bloom and shades of green.

A tall gentleman, with the very blackest hair and beard she had ever seen, arose and stood near the map.

How her heart gave a throb when he said, touching a spot on the map: “That is Antioch, the place where the disciples were first called Christians. I was born in Antioch, where Paul and Barnabas preached Christ. I was born in Antioch, and I was re-born in Antioch.”

Judith held her breath. He was a disciple, a Christian come from Antioch. She drew back, almost afraid; she felt as if Christ must be there standing very near this disciple.

He talked about the beautiful city and made it as near and real as this little village in which there was a church of disciples. It was like seeing one of the twelve disciples, Peter, or James, or John; or perhaps Paul, because he had been in Antioch.

But he said he had been “reborn” there; what could he mean? Re—again; born again. Was he born twice in Antioch? She had been born only once. Must every disciple be born over like this disciple who was born both times in Antioch?

For a long time she puzzled herself over this new, strange thing; then, when she could not bear it any longer, she asked Aunt Affy.

“When he was born, and for years as he grew up, he did not love and obey Christ, and then the Holy Spirit gave him a loving and obedient heart, and that loving and obedient heart is so new that it is like being born over again,” was Aunt Affy’s simple, and sure unraveling of her perplexity.

XVI. ONE OF AUNT AFFY’S EXPERIENCES.