Page:A Girl of the Limberlost.djvu/255

Rh as a punishment for your sins. I don't! I think a lot more of the Almighty. With a whole sky full of worlds on His hands to manage, I'm not believing that He has time to look down on ours, and pick you out of all the millions of we sinners, and set a special kind of torture to eating you. It wouldn't be a gentlemanly thing to do, and, first of all, the Almighty is bound to be a gentleman. I think likely a bruise and bad blood is what caused your trouble. Anyway, I've got to tell you that the cleanest housekeeper I ever knew, and one of the noblest Christian women, was slowly eaten up by a cancer. She got hers from the careless work of a poor doctor. The Almighty is to forgive sin and heal disease, not to invent and spread it." She had gone only a few steps when she again turned back. "If you will gather a lot of red clover bloom, make a tea strong as lye of it, and drink quarts, I think likely it will help you, if you are not too far gone. Anyway, it will cool your blood and make the burning easier to bear." Then she swiftly walked home. Enter the lonely cabin she could not, neither could she sit outside and think. She attacked a bed of beets and hoed until the perspiration ran from her face and body, then she began on the potatoes. When she was too tired to take another stroke she bathed and put on dry clothing. In securing her dress she noticed her husband's carefully preserved clothing lining one wall. She gathered it in a great armload and carried it out to the swamp. Piece by piece