Hampstead all but gasped. This delicate, spirituelle creature that
hard, red-faced partisan’s wife! It seemed impossible.
But Mrs. Burbeck was composedly taking from her lap a twist of tissue
paper from which she unrolled a simple boutonniere, consisting of one
very large, very corrugated and very fragrant rose geranium leaf, upon
which a perfect white carnation had been laid.
"Do you know, Mr. Hampstead," she went on placidly, "what I am going to
do?" and then, as John looked his disclaimer, continued: "I have always
been allowed the privilege of bringing a flower for the minister’s
button-hole. Brother Ingram would never take his flower from any one
else. When the rain kept me away, he would not wear a flower at all.
Brother Aleshire also took his flower from me."
"But," protested John, in sudden alarm, "I am not a minister at all, you
know. I just happened in, and I assure you that all I am thinking of
now is a way to happen out."
The Angel, it appeared, was a woman with deeps of calm strength in her.
"You have been a real minister in what you have done this morning," she
said contentedly, entirely undisturbed by John’s embarrassed frankness.
"But how am I going to get out from under?" gasped the young man,
feeling more and more that he could trust this woman.
The Angel of the Chair smiled inspiringly.
"The Scripture has no rule for getting out from under," she suggested
quietly, "but there is something about not letting go of the plow once
you have grasped the handles."
The Angel was looking straight up at John now, searching his eyes for a
moment, then adding significantly:
"I do not think you are a quitting sort of person."
A quitting sort! John could have blessed this woman. In two sentences
she had felt her way to the principle he had tried to make the very
center of his character,—loyalty to duty and everlasting persistence.
Some people rather thought he was a quitting sort. John knew he was
not, and to prove it bent till his buttonhole was in easy reach of the
hands uplifted with the flower.
"And what," he asked, "does the minister do when he has received this
decoration from the Angel of the Chair?"
It was Mrs. Burbeck’s turn to feel a flush of pleasure at this
appellation from a stranger.
"Why," she smiled, her large eyes lighting persuasively, "he goes into
the pulpit and announces a hymn."
"Which I am not going to do," declared John, "because I should not know
what to do next."
"In that hour it shall be given you," quoted the lady.
Now it was very strange, but when Mrs. Burbeck quoted this, it did not
seem like an appeal to faith at all, but the simple statement of a fact.
It chimed in, too, with that odd suggestion of the presence of the
Presence, which had come to John a while ago.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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