The Other GirlsWhitney, A. D. T. (Adeline Dutton Train)
General
The Other Girls
Whitney, A. D. T. (Adeline Dutton Train)
Family life -- Fiction; Women -- Fiction
Three weeks afterward, she went in as housemaid for the children's
ward to the Hospital; the beautiful charity which stands, a token of
the real best growth of Boston, in that new quarter of her fast
enlarging borders, where the tide of her wealth and her life is
reaching out southward, toward the pure country pleasantness.
We must leave her there, now; at rest from her ambitions; reaching
into a peace they could never have given her; doing daily work that
comes to her as a sign and pledge of acceptance and forgiveness.
She sat by a child's bed one Sunday; the bed of a little girl ten
years old, whom she had singled out to do by for Susie's sake. She
had taken the place of a nurse, to-day, who was ill with an ague.
She read to Maggie the Bible story of Joseph, out of a little book
for children that had been Sue's.
After the child had fallen asleep, Marion fetched her Bible, to look
back after something in the Scripture words.
It had come home to her,--that betrayal and desertion of the boy by
his brethren; it stood with her now for a type of her own selfish
unfaithfulness; it thrust a rebuke and a pain upon her, though she
knew she had repented.
She wanted to see exactly how it was, when, in the Land beyond the
Desert, his brethren came face to face again with Joseph.
"Now, therefore, be not grieved, nor angry with yourselves, that ye
sold me hither; for God did send me before you to preserve life....
To save your lives with a great deliverance. So it was not you that
sent me hither, but God.... And thou shalt dwell in the land of
Goshen, and thou shalt be near unto me."
A great throb of thankfulness, of gladness, came rushing up in her;
it filled her eyes with light; it flushed her cheeks with tender
color. The tears sprung shining; but they did not fall. Peace stayed
them. It was such an answer!
"How pretty you are!" said Maggie, awakening. "Please, give me a
drink of water."
It was as if Susie thought of it, and gave her the chance! She read
secret, loving meanings now, in things that had their meanings only
for her. She believed in spirit-communication,--for she knew it
came; but in its own beautiful, soul-to-soul ways; not by any
outward spells.
She went for the water; she found a piece of ice and put in it. She
came and raised the little head tenderly,--the child was hurt in the
back, and could not be lifted up,--and held the goblet to the gentle
lips; lips patient, like Sue's!
"O, you move me so nice! You give me the drink so handy!"
The beauty was in Marion's face still, warm with an inward joy; the
child's eyes followed her as she rose from bending over her.
"Real pretty," she said again, softly, liking to look at her. And
"real" was beginning to be the word, at last, for Marion Kent.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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