“You do? Tell me how, then, my dear,” he returned, smiling. “Perhaps you
have an inspiration for writing sermons that I have never yet found.”
“Why, Mr. Driggs, I’d try to write every word so’s to make folks that
heard it happier. That’s what I’d do. I’d make ’em _look up_ and see the
sunshine and the sky—and the mountains, ’way off yonder—so they’d see
nothing but bright things and breathe only good air and hear birds
sing—Oh, dear me, _that_—that is the way I’d write a sermon.”
The clergyman’s face had grown grave as he listened to her, but he
kissed her warmly as he thanked her and bade her good-bye. When she had
gone from the study he read again the text written at the top of the
first sheet of sermon paper. It was taken from the book of the Prophet
Jeremiah.
“‘To write every word so’s to make folks that heard it happier,’” he
murmured as he crumpled the sheet of paper in his hand and dropped it in
the waste-basket.
CHAPTER XXIV—THE AWAKENING
With the opening of spring and the close of the sledding season, work
had stopped at Adams’ camp. Rather, the entire plant had been shipped
twenty miles deeper into the forest—mill, bunk-house, cook-shed, and
such corrugated-iron shacks as were worth carting away.
All that was left on the site of the busy camp were huge heaps of
sawdust, piles of slabs, discarded timbers, and the half-burned bricks
into which had been built the portable boiler and engine.
And old Judy Mason. She was not considered worth moving to the new site
of the camp. She was bedridden with rheumatism. This was the report Tim,
the hackman, had brought in.
The old woman’s husband had gone with the outfit to the new camp, for he
could not afford to give up his work. Judy had not been so bad when the
camp was broken up, but when Tim went over for a load of slabs for
summer firewood, he discovered her quite helpless in her bunk and almost
starving. The rheumatic attack had become serious.
Amanda Parlow had at once ridden over with Dr. Nugent. Then she had come
home for her bag and had insisted on the carpenter’s driving her back to
the abandoned camp, proposing to stay with Judy till the old woman was
better.
Aunty Rose had one comment to make upon it, and Carolyn May another. Mr.
Stagg’s housekeeper said:
“That is just like a parcel of men folks—leaving an old woman to look
out for herself. Disgraceful! And Amanda Parlow will not even be thanked
for what she does.”
“How brave and helpful it is of Miss Amanda!” Carolyn May cried. “Dear
me, when I grow up, I hope I can be a gradjerate nurse like Miss Mandy.”
“I reckon that’s some spell ahead,” chuckled Mr. Parlow, to whom she
said this when he picked her up for a drive after taking his daughter to
the camp.
“And you’ll come nigh to wantin’ to be a dozen other things ’fore you’re
old enough to go to work in a hospital, I shouldn’t wonder. Gid-ap,
Cherry!”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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