There was no hope but in Cousin Don. XXIV. “I HAVE ALWAYS THOUGHT YOU CARED.” “‘What is it thou knowest, sweet voice?’ I cried, ‘A hidden hope,’ the voice replied.” —Tennyson. “Judith, don’t stay in this little close entry when all out-doors is calling to you,” said Aunt Affy. “But I thought she might stir and want something,” replied Aunt Rody’s nurse; “she looks up so patient and pitiful when she wants something.” “My work is all done; I’ll sit here; you are losing your color, child. What will your Cousin Don say to me when he comes home to claim you?” “He will not come home to do that,” said Judith, rising reluctantly to give Aunt Affy her low chair. “I have a foreboding that something is happening to him. He never forgot me before.” “Forebodings come out of tired head and feet and back. I am allowing you to do too much. This is Saturday afternoon and your play time. The baking is done, and now that we are rid of churning—what _would_ poor Rody say to me for selling the milk and making no butter? I feel that I am ‘deceiving’ her at every turn about the house. Run up stairs and put on the blue muslin you look so cool in, and go out in the hammock and forget the responsibility that takes away your appetite and gives you big eyes. Dear child, death must come. It is the voice of the Lord calling Rody. You know what George MacDonald says: Death is only going to sleep when one is downright sleepy. Rody _is_ downright sleepy. Think how she sleeps half the time, poor old soul.” “Do you think she is glad to be ‘downright sleepy’?” “Aren’t you, always, when your night comes?” “But, Aunt Affy, she hasn’t been—she wasn’t—I did not think she cared.” “Her light has almost gone out, sometimes, I do believe. But it’s there, burning. She has a spark of real faith that never went out. She wasn’t as loving in her ways as she was in her heart. Now, don’t stand another minute. I want you to go to church to-morrow, too. John Kenney is out on the piazza waiting for you; he’s come to the parsonage to spend Sunday.” In an instant Judith was all light and color. John Kenney was the kind of a friend that no one else in the world was; as grave as the minister himself, at times, as book loving, and yet as full of fun and frolic as a boy; he was taller than Roger, and handsome; Roger was fine, but he was not handsome; she had no fear or reverence for John, he stood beside her, and walked beside her; they were boy and girl together; John was nearly three years older; he would be twenty-one in the winter. She stood still radiant. “You look rested enough now,” remarked Aunt Affy. “I was not so tired, I was only blue; I was thinking about Don. John has been away all summer; he has not been in Bensalem since my birthday.” “Did he come for that?” inquired Aunt Affy, keeping any suggestion out of her voice. She would not put ideas into the child’s head.