Katherine held her in a close, loving embrace for a moment, then
gently forced her into a rocker and knelt beside her, still
keeping her arms around her, while she worked mentally for
dominion and harmony.
But the flood-gates were open wide. The pent-up yearnings of years
were let loose, and it was some time before the storm began to
abate.
Once or twice she attempted to say something, then lapsed into
fresh weeping, her self-control strangely shattered; for Jennie
had seldom been known to shed tears in the presence of others,
even under great pressure.
"Hush!" at length commanded Katherine, with gentle authority; "be
still and know who has you in His care."
"That's pa-part of it!--to--to think that I--I didn't 'know'; and
now it has c-come when I never really had f-f-faith to be-believe
it would. I--do-don't d-deserve it," sobbed the girl, with another
helpless outburst.
While Katherine is patiently waiting and working for the return of
a more tranquil frame of mind, let us take a backward glance and
follow Jennie on her eventful trip to Boston.
Upon her arrival in town she went directly to the store to which
she had been directed and where her order was immediately filled;
then finding that she had more than an hour on her hands before
her train would go, she left her package to be called for and
slipped into a large department store, to look at some pictures
that had been recently and extensively advertised in the papers.
But before reaching the room where they were on exhibition, she
was attracted another way, by seeing a crowd of people standing
before an alcove that had been curtained off, and where a so-
called "transformation scene" was being enacted before admiring
and wondering observers.
She had never seen anything of the kind and stood like one
entranced, while an exquisite marble statue, representing a
beautiful girl holding a basket of flowers in her hands, slowly
and mysteriously took on a lifelike appearance, until at length
she stood a living, breathing maiden, smiling brightly into the
faces around her, while her basket of flowers had also been
changed to a cradle of bulrushes, in the midst of which lay an
infant reaching up eager hands to the lovely woman above him.
Jennie watched this scene--supposed to represent "Pharaoh's
Daughter and The Infant Moses"--change the second time, then
turned abruptly away, just as the metamorphosis back to marble
began, to find herself confronted by a fine-looking, middle-aged
gentleman, who was gazing with strange intentness at her.
She would have passed him without a second glance, but, lifting
his hat to her, he courteously inquired:
"Young lady, will you kindly tell me your name?"
Jennie flushed with sudden embarrassment. She had often been
warned never to converse with strangers who might accost her; but,
in this instance, while she had no intention of telling him who
she was, she felt exceedingly awkward to refuse to grant a request
so politely solicited.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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