Page:Female Prose Writers of America.djvu/369

 was home, too, even if the old servant, who moved with such a cautious tread among the dusty books of her master’s study, was the only companionable creature, save the bird. How carefully she rubbed the dingy furniture, and mended the threadbare curtains, long since faded from their cheerful neatness! It was, perhaps, this still seclusion that had given Miriam, with all her eager childish grace, thoughts above her years; and, after her friend had gone, she put the kitten from her lap and leaned out of the window to watch for her father’s return, musing, as she had never done before, how men could ever live without knowing they had a Father up in Heaven, and who else they could thank for taking care of them through the long dark night? And then her friend—Paul, he had told her to call him, when he first came to read those strange Hebrew words to her father, a daily study of the ancient language of the Bible he reverenced so much—Paul was going away to tell them to love him. How very good he was! She should miss him a great deal though. Perhaps he would take her too. Oh, she had not thought of that before! But, then, there was her father! No, Paul must go alone. Poor Paul, with no one to love him but herself! How gravely he had made her promise to love him, as if she had not always done so from that very first day when he had taken her upon his knee and talked to her as no one else could talk!

The young curate, for such he was, of a wealthy parish church, old and “lukewarm” because of its long prosperity, had gone to his daily duty of reading the evening service to a scattered congregation, half hidden in the high straight pews, that almost stifled their faint responses. He went with a heavy load upon his heart, for he was a stranger among them and to their sympathies. There was no poverty to call such as he to their homes; the rector only was bidden to the rich man’s feasts. He came and went to and from the gilded chancel, with scarce a smile of recognition from those to whom his rich voice had read the “comfortable words” of their Master and his. The Bible told him they were brethren, but his heart said they were utter strangers. It was this cold supineness that had first turned his thoughts to a more earnest,