African Americans -- Education -- Juvenile fiction; Sunday school literature
So Mr. Sutherland sat down by the sick boy and read to Tom until the
sunlight faded.
“That was the next best thing to seeing Martha, sir,” said Tom
gratefully as he finished. “I am very much obliged to you.”
“Not at all,” replied Mr. Sutherland, heartily. “Now I am going away,
and I shall send Aunt Dinah to see that you have what you want for
supper. Come, pet.”
So he went away, taking Lillie with him, and left happy Tom, sitting
in the twilight, grateful and content, with the words of the Psalmist
making sweet music in his heart:
“Thou shalt keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on thee.”
After this first day of pleasure Tom could not be kept away from the
window, and so, day after day, his chair was moved up to it, and
himself put into it, all wrapped about with shawls and supported by
pillows, and left to spend the day by the window. He had numerous
visitors--not too many--but just enough to make him feel that he was
not alone.
One morning, after he had been up about a week, he was sitting by the
open window as usual, watching the cotton-pickers in the distance, when
he heard steps coming up the stairs. “Somebody is coming to see me,”
he thought, so he listened, still looking out of the window. Something
attracted his attention there, so that when the door opened he did not
immediately turn his head. There were quick steps across the floor and
some one came kneeling by his chair, and then he turned and looked down
into the eager face of his sister Martha.
“Oh, Martha! Martha!” he cried, seizing her hand and bending down to
her face, “has God sent me this joy too? My dear sister, I have wanted
to see you more than anything on earth.”
“And I am here, Tom,” she replied joyfully--“come to take good care of
you. Mr. Sutherland wrote me that you would not send for me for fear
I could not come, but that you wanted me very much. How are you, dear
Tom?”
“I believe, Martha,” he said, still holding her hand and looking down
into her face, “I believe I am perfectly happy.”
“And how is the Sunday-school?” his sister asked. “Oh, you can’t think
how Miss Mason and I have enjoyed that school!”
“It’s perfectly wonderful, Martha,” he replied with glowing eyes. “It
seems to me that for the past few days, when the thought of it came,
those four grand words, ‘What hath God wrought?’ have been the only
ones which could anyway rest me. Listen while I tell.”
Thereupon followed a long conversation in questions and answers about
the summer’s doings, with pleased eagerness on one side and loving
sympathy on the other, until they knew all those little things which
pen and paper never tell, and which therefore the letters which had
passed between them had not contained.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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