In League with Israel: A Tale of the Chattanooga ConferenceJohnston, Annie F. (Annie Fellows)
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In League with Israel: A Tale of the Chattanooga Conference
Johnston, Annie F. (Annie Fellows)
Epworth League (U.S.) -- Fiction
Bethany had a dim recollection of the doctor's daughter, a little
brown-eyed child of her own age. She could remember playing
hide-and-seek with her one day in an old peony-garden. But she had died
years ago. There was only one other child--Lee. He had grown to be a
big boy of ten now, but he was too young to feel his mother's loss at
the time she was taken away. Bethany knew that she was still living in a
private asylum near town, and that the doctor saw her every day, no
matter how violent she was. Lee was the one bright spot left in his
life. Busy night and day with his patients, he saw very little of the
boy. The child had never known any home but a boarding-house, and was as
lawless and unrestrained as some little wild animal. But the doctor saw
no fault in him. He praised the reports brought home from school of high
per cents in his studies, knowing nothing of his open defiance to
authority. He kissed the innocent-looking face on the pillow next his
own when he came in late at night, never dreaming of the forbidden
places it had been during the day.
Everybody said, "Poor Baxter Trent! It's a pity that Lee is such a
little terror;" but no one warned him. Perhaps he would not have
believed them if they had. The thought of all this moved Bethany to
sudden speech.
"Uncle Doctor," she broke out impetuously--she had unconsciously used
the old name--as she sat down on a low stool near his knee, "I was
piling up my troubles to-night before you came. Not the old ones," she
added, quickly, as she saw an expression of sympathy cross his face,
"but the new ones that confront me."
She gave a mournful little smile.
"'Coming events cast their shadow before,' you know, and these shadows
look so dark and threatening. I see no possible way but to sell this
home. You have had so much to bear yourself that it seems mean to worry
you with my troubles; but I don't know what to do, and I don't know
what's the matter with me--"
She stopped abruptly, and choked back a sob. He laid his hand softly on
her shining hair.
"Tell me all about it, child," he said, in a soothing tone. Then he
added, lightly, "I can't make a diagnosis of the case until I know all
the symptoms."
When he had heard her little outburst of worry and distrust, he said,
slowly:
"You have done all in your power to prepare yourself for a position as
stenographer. You have done all you could to secure such a position, and
have been unsuccessful. But you still have a roof over your head, you
still have enough on hands to keep you two months longer without selling
the house or even renting it--an arrangement that has not seemed to
occur to you." He smiled down into her disconsolate face. "It strikes me
that a certain little lass I know has been praying, 'Give us this day
our to-morrow's bread.' O Bethany, child, can you never learn to trust?"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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