“I hevn’t a bit of doubt of it. But it is too much for thee to manage. Thou art wearying soul and body.”
“Far from it. It is as good and as great a thing to save a soul as it is to make it. I am varry happy in my work, and as Mr. Foster would put it, I feel a good deal nearer God, than I did counting up interest money in London.”
In the meantime the home life at Annis Hall was not only changed but constantly changing. There was always some stranger--some expert of one kind or another--a guest in its rooms, and their servants or assistants kept the kitchen in a racket of cooking, and eating, and unusual excitement. Mistress Annis sometimes felt that it would be impossible to continue the life, but every day the squire came home so tired, and so happy, that all discomforts fled before his cheery “Hello!” and his boyish delight in the rapidly growing edifice. Dick had become his paid secretary, and in the meantime was studying bookkeeping, and learning from Jonathan all that could be known, concerning long and short staple wools.
Katherine was her mother’s right hand all the long day, but often, towards closing time, she went down to the village on her pony, and then the squire, or Dick, or both, rode home with her. Poor Kitty! Harry no longer wrote to her, and Josepha said she had heard that he had gone to America on a business speculation, “and it is a varry likely thing,” she said, “for Harry knew a penny from a pound, before he learned how to count. I wouldn’t fret about him, dearie.”
“I am not fretting, aunt, but how would you feel, if you had shut the door of your heart, and your love lay dead on its threshold. Nothing is left to me now, but the having loved.”
“Well, dearie, when we hevn’t what we love, we must love what we hev. Thou isn’t a bit like thy sen.”
“I have never felt young since Harry left me.”
“That is a little thing to alter thee so much.”
“No trouble that touches the heart is a little thing.”
“Niver mind the past, dearie. Love can work miracles. If Harry really loved thee he will come back to thee. Love is the old heartache of the world, and then all in a minute some day, he is the Healing Love and The Comforter. I hev a good mind to tell thee something, that I niver told to any ither mortal sinner.”