Christian fiction; Medical fiction; Scotland -- Fiction; Surgeons -- Fiction; Wingfold, Thomas (Fictitious character) -- Fiction
With Dorothy's arm round her waist, Juliet climbed trembling to the
warmer room. On a rickety wooden chair, Dorothy made her sit in the
sunshine, while she went and gathered chips and shavings and bits of
wood left by the workmen. With these she soon kindled a fire in the
rusty grate. Then she took off Juliet's shoes and stockings, and put her
own upon her. She made no resistance, only her eyes followed Dorothy's
bare feet going to and fro, as if she felt something was wrong, and had
not strength to inquire into it.
But Dorothy's heart rebuked her for its own lightness. It had not been
so light for many a day. It seemed as if God was letting her know that
He was there. She spread her cloak on a sunny spot of the floor, made
Juliet lie down upon it, put a bundle of shavings under her head,
covered her with her own cloak, which she had dried at the fire, and was
leaving the room.
"Where are you going, Dorothy?" cried Juliet, seeming all at once to
wake up.
"I am going to fetch your husband, dear," answered Dorothy.
She gave a great cry, rose to her knees, and clasped Dorothy round
hers.
"No, no, no!" she screamed. "You shall not. If you do, I swear I will
run straight to the pond."
Notwithstanding the wildness of her voice and look, there was an evident
determination in both.
"I will do nothing you don't like, dear," said Dorothy. "I thought that
was the best thing I could do for you."
"No! no! no! any thing but that!"
"Then of course I won't. But I must go and get you something to eat."
"I could not swallow a mouthful; it would choke me. And where would be
the good of it, when life is over!"
"Don't talk like that, dear. Life can't be over till it is taken from
us."
"Ah, you would see it just as I do, if you knew all!"
"Tell me all, then."
"Where is the use, when there is no help?"
"No help!" echoed Dorothy.--The words she had so often uttered in her
own heart, coming from the lips of another, carried in them an
incredible contradiction.--Could God make or the world breed the
irreparable?--"Juliet," she went on, after a little pause, "I have often
said the same myself, but--"
"You!" interrupted Juliet; "you who always professed to believe!"
Dorothy's ear could not distinguish whether the tone was of indignation
or of bitterness.
"You never heard me, Juliet," she answered, "profess any thing. If my
surroundings did so for me, I could not help that. I never dared say I
believed any thing. But I hope--and, perhaps," she went on with a smile,
"seeing Hope is own sister to Faith, she may bring me to know her too
some day. Paul says----"
Dorothy had been brought up a dissenter, and never said _St._ this one
or that, any more than the Christians of the New Testament.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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