Kitabı oku: «Molly Brown's Junior Days», sayfa 9
CHAPTER XVII.
THE WAYFARERS
Human beings have been variously compared by imaginative persons to pawns on a chessboard; storm-tossed boats on the sea of life; pilgrims on a weary way, and other things of no resemblance whatever to the foregoing.
Molly, marching stoically along the lonely road under the impression that she was on her way to Wellington when she was really turned toward Exmoor, might have fitted into any of those comparisons rather more literally than was intended.
She was certainly a storm-tossed pilgrim if not a boat; the way was decidedly weary and as pawn, pilgrim or ship, whichever you will, she was about to come in contact with another of life’s pawns, pilgrims or ships, to the decided advantage of the one and amazement of the other.
This new pawn, pilgrim or ship was now advancing down the road, and Molly, mindful of the fact that she was not getting anywhere when she felt sure that by this time she should at least have reached the lake, was not sorry to see a human being.
The stranger looked decidedly like the pilgrim of romance. He wore an old black felt hat with a broad slouching brim and a long Spanish cape reaching below his knees; his staff was a rosewood cane with a silver knob.
He was about to pass Molly without even glancing in her direction when she stopped him.
“Would you mind telling me if it’s very far from Wellington?” she asked. “I’m afraid I’m lost.”
“Do you imagine you are going to Wellington?” he demanded, looking up.
Instantly Molly recognized him. He was the man she had seen the night before in Professor Green’s study.
“I did think so,” she answered meekly.
“I would advise you to go in the opposite direction, then,” he said. “Exmoor lies that way.” He pointed down the road with his stick.
“How stupid of me!” exclaimed Molly. “I was coasting and tumbled off the sled. I was completely dazed, I suppose, when I crawled out of the drift.”
The two walked along in silence. Molly gave the man a covert glance. He was very distinguished looking and vaguely reminded her of someone.
“You are one of the students of Wellington?” he asked presently.
“Yes, sir,” answered Molly respectfully.
The stranger smiled.
“You are from the south. I never heard a girl across the boundary line use ‘sir.’”
“I am,” she answered briefly.
“And from what part, may I ask?”
“From Carmichael Station, Kentucky.”
The man stopped as if he had been struck a blow in the face.
“Carmichael Station, Kentucky,” he repeated in a half whisper. Drawing a leather wallet from his inside pocket, he took out a folded legal cap document and opened it. “Ahem. Not far to go,” he said in a low voice, running down a list with one finger. “Your name – ”
“Brown.”
“Mildred Carmichael Brown, I presume.”
“No, Mary. My sister’s named Mildred.”
The old man refolded the document, put it carefully back in the wallet, which he returned to his pocket. Then he resumed his walk, muttering to himself.
“Strange! Strange!” Molly heard him say. “Here in a snowstorm, in the wilderness, on Christmas day, too, I should happen to meet – I can’t get away from them,” he cried angrily, waving his cane. “Victims, victims! Everywhere. They rise up and confront me when I’m sleeping or waking – like ghosts of the past – ”
His mutterings gradually became inarticulate as he wrapped his cape around him and stalked through the snow.
“Hunted – hunted – hounded about – ” he began again. Suddenly he stopped, took off his hat and held his face up to heaven as if he were about to address some unseen power.
“I’m tired,” he cried. “I’ve had enough of these wanderings; these eternal haunting visions. Let me have peace!” He shook his cane impotently at the overcast skies.
It was then that Molly recognized him. On that very day but one, a year ago, had she not seen Judith Blount stand under a wintry sky and defy heaven in the same rebellious way?
Judith’s father had come back from South America and was hiding in the Professor’s room at Wellington! And how like they were, the father and daughter; the same black eyes, too close together; the same handsome aquiline noses, and the same self-pitying, brooding natures.
Evidently, Mr. Blount had suffered deeply. Molly thought he must be very poor. Looking at him closely, she noticed the shabby gentility of his appearance; the shiny seams of his Spanish cape which had been torn and patched in many places; his old thin shoes, split across the toes, and his worn, travel-stained hat.
She wondered if he had any money. She suspected that he was very hungry and her soul was moved with pity for the poor, broken old man who had once been worth millions.
“Mr. Blount,” she began.
“How did you know my name?” he cried, shivering all over like a whipped dog. “I didn’t mention it, did I? I haven’t told any one, have I? I came down here in disguise.” He laughed feebly. “Disguised as a broken old man. I went to Edwin’s rooms,” he wandered on, forgetting that he had asked Molly a question. “You know where they are?”
Molly nodded her head. She knew quite well that the Professor lodged in one of the former college houses built on the old campus, used long ago before the Quadrangle had been built flanking the new campus.
“The housekeeper recognized me as a relation and I waited in his room some hours,” went on the old man in a trembling voice.
“And where did you spend the night?”
“In the cloister study. I found the key on his desk. It was marked ‘cloister study.’”
“But where did you eat?” asked Molly gently.
The melting sympathy in her eyes and voice encouraged the old man to pour out his woes. Evidently it was a great relief to him to talk after his miseries and hardships.
“I’ve been living off apples,” he said. “Very fine apples. There was a big basket of them on Edwin’s study table.”
“But there’s an inn in the village,” she exclaimed.
He smiled grimly.
“I have come all the way from Caracas to Wellington,” he said. “I was poor when I started; yes, miserably, wretchedly poor. I am an old man, old and broken. I want peace, do you understand? Peace.”
They had reached the lake and in fifteen minutes would arrive at the Quadrangle. Mr. Blount was leading the way, occasionally hitting the ground savagely with his cane.
Molly thrust her hand into her blouse and drew out a chamois skin bag which hung by a silk tape around her neck. Since the pilfering had been going on at Wellington she carried what little money she had with her during the day and hid it under her pillow at night.
Extracting ten dollars from the bag, she hurried to the old man’s side and touched him on the shoulder.
“Mr. Blount, I’m under great obligations to your cousin. He has been very kind to me – always – and I’d like you to – I’d – ”
It was difficult to know what to say. Was it not strange for her, a poor little school girl, to be offering money to a man who had so recently been a millionaire?
“Won’t you take this money?” she began again, resolutely. “I don’t think anyone will recognize you at the inn. It’s just a little country place and you will be quite comfortable there until I find Professor Green. I may get word to him to-night, or to-morrow at any rate.”
Mr. Blount eyed the money as a hungry dog eyes a bone. Evidently hunger and fatigue had got the better of his pride. He took the bill and touched it lovingly. Then he put it in his pocket.
“You’re a nice girl,” he said. “I thank you.”
“Would you like to see George Green?” asked Molly timidly.
“No, no, no!” he answered fiercely. “Not that young fool. I don’t suppose Judith is here?” he added presently in a tremulous voice.
“No, sir. She’s in New York for the holidays.”
They shook hands and separated. Mr. Blount took the path down the other side of the lake across the links to the village and Molly followed the path on the college side. As she cut through the pine woods she heard a shout.
“Molly Brown, where have you been? We have had a search for you!” cried Judy, rushing up, followed by the three boys.
“I reckon I’ve been a good deal like the pig who thought he was going to Cork when he was really going to Dublin,” laughed Molly. “If I hadn’t asked the way, I suppose I’d have been almost to Exmoor by this time. I am a poor person to find my way about. My brother used to tell me to take the direction opposite to the one my instincts told me to take and then I’d be going right.”
“In other words, first make sure you’re right and then take the other way,” said Lawrence Upton, laughing.
“You’d make a good explorer, Miss Molly,” remarked Andy McLean. “You might discover the South Pole and think all the time it was the North Pole.”
“That would be of great benefit to humanity,” answered Molly, “but you may be sure I’d stop and ask a policeman before I reached the equator.”
“It’s your proper punishment for cutting church this morning,” here put in George Green. “I don’t know whether it was because it was a good excuse to go sleighing, but a lot of people were at the ten service. Even old Edwin came in the trail of Alice Fern.”
“What a pretty name!” said Molly. “It sounds so woodsy.”
“She’s a cousin,” George went on, “and a winner, too. They’ve got a jim-dandy place ten miles the other side of Wellington, Fern Grove. We spent last New Year’s with them and had a cracker-jack time.”
“George Theodore Green!” ejaculated Judy, “I never heard so much slang. I wonder you are allowed inside Exmoor.”
“Oh, I cut it out there. I only use it when it’s safe.”
“I regard that as a slight on present company,” broke in Andy. “I think you’ll just have to take a little dose of punishment for that, Dodo. Get busy, Larrie.”
There was a wild scramble in the snow, and finally Dodo, who had developed into a big, strapping fellow, stronger than either of his friends, intrenched himself behind a tree and began throwing snowballs with the unerring aim of the best pitcher on the Exmoor team. Molly hastened on to the Quadrangle, while Judy with true sportsman taste waited to see the fun.
Molly went straight to the telephone booths in the basement corridor. By good fortune, the haughty being who presided at the switchboard was hovering about waiting for a long distance call from a “certain party” in New York.
That she alone in all the world was concerned in this call and that she wished to have this corner of the globe entirely to herself for the full enjoyment of it were very evident facts when Molly asked for “Fern-16-Wellington.”
“I’m not working to-day,” announced the operator shortly, arranging her huge Psyche knot at the mirror beside her desk.
Molly looked into the girl’s implacable face. No feminine appeal would melt that heart of stone, but perhaps the magic name of man might fix her.
“Would you do it to oblige Professor Green? I have an important message for him.”
“I guess that’s different,” announced the owner of the Psyche knot, with a high nasal accent. “Why didn’t you say so at first? I guess Professor Green is about the nicest gent’man around here.”
Sitting down at the switchboard, she slipped on the headpiece with a professional flourish. Then, with a hand-quicker-than-the-eye movement, she pushed several organ stops up and down, stuck the end of a green tube into a hole and remarked in a high pitched voice that had great projective powers:
“Wellington Exchange? Hello! Yes, I know it’s Christmas. On hand for a long distance, are you? Oh, you-u-u. Well, say, listen. To oblige a certain party – a very attractive gent’man – call up ‘Fern-16-Wellington.’”
Then there was a detached monologue about a certain party in you know where – same gent’man that was down Thanksgiving time. Suddenly, with professional alertness, the telephone girl stopped short.
“Fern-16-Wellington? Here’s your party. Booth 3,” she added to Molly, in a voice so radically different that Molly had a confused feeling that the young person who operated the Wellington switchboard might be a creature of two personalities. She retired timidly to the booth.
“Is this the residence of Miss Alice Fern?” she asked.
“It is,” came the voice of a woman from the other end.
“I would like to speak to Professor Edwin Green.”
“He’s very much engaged just now. Is it important?”
“I think it is,” hesitated Molly.
“What name?”
“Now what earthly difference does it make to her what my name is?” Molly reflected with some irritation. “Would you please tell him it’s a message from the University?”
“I’ll tell him nothing until you tell me your name.”
Could this be Miss Alice Fern? Molly was fairly certain it was. Perhaps she also had two personalities.
“It doesn’t do any good to tell my name. I have nothing to do with the message. I’m only delivering it for someone else. But if you want to know, it’s ‘Brown.’”
“Mrs. or Miss Brown?”
Suddenly Molly heard the Professor’s voice quite close to the telephone saying:
“Alice, is that someone for me?”
“Yes, an individual of the illuminating name of Brown wishes to speak to you. I don’t see why they can’t leave you alone for one day in the year.”
Molly smiled. Why was it that down deep in the unexplored caverns of her soul there lurked an infinitesimally tiny feeling of relief that Miss Alice Fern was plainly a vixen?
“How do you do, Professor Green? This is Molly Brown.”
“How do you do? Is anything the matter?” answered the Professor in rather an anxious tone.
“I wanted to tell you that Mr. Blount is here. Old Mr. Blount.”
The Professor seemed too surprised to answer for a moment. Or it might have been that Miss Alice Fern was lingering at his elbow and embarrassed him.
“Where?” he asked.
“He spent last night in the cloister study. Now, he’s at the inn. He asked me to let you know. I met him on the road. He’s very unhappy.”
“How did he happen to be in the study?”
“He – he had no money.”
“And now he’s at the inn? Has he seen anyone but you?”
“No.” Molly blushed hotly.
“I’ll come right over. Thank you very much.”
“Now, Edwin, what a nuisance!” broke in the voice of Miss Fern.
“Good-bye. Thank you again. I really must, Alice. Very impor – ”
The receiver had been hung up and the connection lost.
“Oh, these cousins!” Molly reflected with a laugh as she hurried up to her room.
**********
There was a gay party at the McLeans’ that night and one unexpected guest arrived just before dinner. It was Professor Green. They squeezed him in somehow at the end of the table with the doctor, and the two made merry together like school boys. Molly had never seen the Professor of English Literature in such joyous spirits. After dinner, when the dancing commenced, he sought her out and led her to a secluded sofa in the back hall. She began at once by asking about Mr. Blount, but the Professor was not listening.
“That’s one of the prettiest dresses I’ve seen you wear,” he interrupted. “Yellow is not becoming to most people, but it is to you. Probably because it has the same golden quality that’s in your hair.”
“I’m glad you like it,” said Molly, turning red under his steady gaze.
“I found your note on my study floor,” he went on.
“I was afraid you wouldn’t remember what I was talking about, after all,” she exclaimed. “But I had to write it. I have never really been happy since I said that cruel thing to you. I was so wretched the day afterward, and when I rushed to find you in your study, you were gone!” she broke off with a tearful glance into his eyes.
The Professor beamed upon her.
“So you were unhappy,” he said, as if the statement was not entirely unpleasing.
“Oh, yes. I know now that you were quite right to tell Miss Walker about that silly episode of the burying of the slipper.”
“But I never told her. I know the story, of course, and the explanation. The President told me herself.”
“But who did tell, then?”
“That I can’t say.”
It was now Molly’s turn to beam on the Professor.
“I am glad you didn’t tell her,” she exclaimed in tones of great relief. “You see, you didn’t inform on Judith Blount that time, and I was hurt. I couldn’t help from being. I was really awfully sore.”
“My dear child,” said the Professor hurriedly, “promise hereafter to regard me as a faithful friend. Never doubt my sincerity again.”
“I promise,” answered Molly, feeling intensely proud without knowing why.
Then the talk drifted to Mr. Blount.
“And you haven’t mentioned meeting him?” he asked. “Not even to Miss Kean?”
Molly shook her head.
“You are a very unusual young woman, Miss Brown. It’s important to keep Mr. Blount’s presence here a secret. If word got out that he had come back, there would be a great hue and cry in the papers. I have him with me now at my rooms until Richard gets here. The family will be very grateful to you for your kindness to him.”
Lawrence Upton was coming down the hall to claim Molly for a dance.
“Are you going back to the Ferns’ to-morrow?” she asked hurriedly.
“I think not,” answered the Professor with the ghost of a smile. “I am detained here on business.”
The next morning Molly received a short note from Professor Green, inclosing a ten dollar bill.
There was a postscript which said:
“I’ve opened a barrel of greenings. Better come around and get some.”
CHAPTER XVIII.
HEALING THE BLIND
“But, Madeleine, I never touched an iron in my life. I wouldn’t know how to go about it,” protested Judith Blount.
“It’s high time you learned then, child. It’s a very useful piece of knowledge, I assure you. You may begin on handkerchiefs first. They are easy, just a flat surface, and it doesn’t matter if you scorch one, especially as it’s your own. Test the iron like this, see. Pick it up with the holder, wet your finger and touch the bottom. If it gives out a sizzly sound, it’s fairly hot and may be used on something damp. It will surely scorch dry material. Always sprinkle. Rough-dry things can’t be ironed decently unless they have been sprinkled and allowed to get damp through and through.”
Madeleine Petit’s unceasing flow of conversation did not stop while Judith took her first lesson in ironing.
“You see,” continued Madeleine, “I’ve made quite a name for myself for doing up fine things and I really need an assistant, Judith. And, since you need the money, and I like you better than any girl in college, I want you to help me.”
Judith winced at the mention of poverty, but her face softened when Madeleine spoke of friendship.
After all, was it not good to have a friend, a real tried and devoted friend who had nothing to gain but friendship in return? Yes, Madeleine did talk a great deal. We all have our faults. Judith’s was a temper. She knew that. But Madeleine was good company, nevertheless, much better company than those false friends of Beta Phi days. She was charming and pretty and she had a heart of pure gold. Moreover, she was a lady, if she did talk so much.
Judith loved Madeleine. For the first time in her life she felt the stirrings of a really deep affection for another girl. It had quickened her parched soul like the waters of a freshet flowing through a thirsty land. Madeleine had first gained the respect of the proud, discontented girl by being always good-naturedly firm, and now she had gained her love.
Furthermore, Judith felt for the first time the pleasure of doing something for someone else. It was a matter of infinite secret joy to her that she had been able to help Madeleine with her studies. In a way she had constituted herself tutor to the little Southern girl; had criticized her themes; given her a boost in the dreaded French Literature and carried her over the blighting period of mid-year examinations. Madeleine had spent Christmas with the Blounts at a boarding house in New York and had given them a taste of Southern conversation, humor and anecdotes that had made that dreary time for them to blossom with new enjoyments.
And now Judith was learning to iron. At first she handled the iron quite awkwardly, but in a few minutes she became interested and the pile of handkerchiefs rapidly decreased.
“Of course, it isn’t as if either one of us expects to have to iron handkerchiefs always,” went on Madeleine, “but it doesn’t hurt us to know how, just the same, and I have always found that doing common things well only made one do uncommon things better. Now, I intend to be a Professor of Mathematics. I don’t know where nor how, but those are my intentions. There’s no ironing of jabots connected with mathematics, but somehow I feel that ironing jabots well makes me more proficient in mathematics.
“By the way, have you settled on anything to do yet? It’s time you began to think about it, unless you decide to take a Post Grad. course and be with me next year. That would be perfectly grand, wouldn’t it?”
Madeleine’s small pretty hands paused an instant in their busy fluttering over the garments she was sprinkling, and she smiled so sweetly upon Judith that the black-browed young woman felt moved beyond the power of speech and could only smile silently in reply.
Oh, heavens, it was good to have a friend! Madeleine had come at a time when she most needed her; when the whole world was nothing but a black, hideous picture and life was a dreary waste. Not her mother, not Richard, not Cousin Edwin, could take the place of Madeleine.
“You know I always said I wouldn’t work for a living, Madeleine,” she answered presently, gulping down these new, strange emotions.
“My dear, we all say such things, but it’s only talk. And, after all, it’s better to work than to be an object of charity. Think of making your own money; having it come in every month – say a hundred dollars, or even more – earned by you? Why, it’s glorious. It’s better than running across a gold mine by accident or inheriting a fortune, because you have done it yourself. I intend to earn a great deal of money. I shall rise from being a teacher to having a splendid school of my own. It will be the most fashionable school in the South and all the finest families will send their daughters there. And what will you be in my school, Judith? Because you must commence now to work up to that eminence. Will you be part owner with me?”
Judith laughed.
“You’re an absurd, adorable, sweet child,” she said, and went on ironing busily.
After all, life was not so desperately unpleasant.
There was a knock on the door. Judith put down the iron hastily and retreated to the window. She had not yet reached the point where she was willing for others to see her engaged in this menial work.
“Come in,” called Madeleine, without stopping an instant.
To Judith’s relief, however, it was Mrs. O’Reilly.
“A note for you, Miss Blount, and the man’s waiting for an answer.”
Judith tore open the envelope impatiently. It was a bill of two years’ running, amounting to nearly forty dollars, from the stationery and candy shop.
On the bottom she was requested to remit at once.
“Tell the man – anything, Mrs. O’Reilly. I can’t see him. That’s all.”
“Certainly, Miss,” said the Irish woman with a good-natured smile.
“These poor young college ladies was in hard luck just like the men sometimes,” she thought as she turned away.
Judith sat down and began to think. Richard was having a great struggle to keep her at college, her mother and himself at the boarding house, and her father in a sanitarium. It would really be unkind to burden him with that bill; but what was to be done?
“Is it that old stationery man again?” asked Madeleine, who had inherited a profound contempt for dunning shopkeepers.
“Yes, it is, and I don’t know what to do.”
“Why don’t you put an advertisement in the ‘Commune’? You have no idea how it will bring in work. And then hang out a shingle, too. People have got to learn to recognize you as a wage-earning person before they come around and offer you things to do.”
“But what can I do? I don’t know how to iron well enough to take in laundry, like you.”
A voice outside called:
“Is this Miss Madeleine Petit’s room?”
“Come in. Can’t you see the name on the door?” answered Madeleine. “There’s only one Petit at Wellington and I’m the lady.”
Millicent Porter now entered.
She looked smaller and more shriveled than ever in a beautiful mink coat and cap and a velvet dress of a rich shade of blue that breathed prosperity in every fold.
“This is the region where signs are out asking for work, isn’t it?” she asked in a pleasantly patronizing, unctious voice.
“We don’t ask for work. We announce that we do it and the work comes,” replied Madeleine, eyeing the visitor with a kind of humorous pity.
“Be that as it may,” said Miss Porter, “I have some work I want done and I’m looking for a very competent and reliable person to do it.”
Judith winced at the word “reliable.”
“This isn’t a servants’ agency, you know, Miss Porter,” answered the spunky Madeleine. “Those words are generally used when one engages a cook or a housemaid. What is the work like?”
“I’m going to give an exhibition of my silver work at the George Washington Bazaar. I may sell some of it if I can get the price, and what I want is a skillful and re – or rather clever – ” Madeleine blinked both eyes rapidly at the substitution – “person to help me get it in order. Most of it is awfully tarnished and it will need a good deal of polishing.”
“How much will you pay a skillful, clever person?” demanded Madeleine, determined to drive a good bargain and shrewdly guessing the kind of person she had to deal with.
“I’ll pay ten dollars,” answered Millicent glibly.
“What are the pieces like?”
“Oh, there are chains, necklaces, platters and bowls, and a lot of ivory things I have picked up in Europe that must be carefully washed.”
“We’ll do the work for fifteen dollars,” announced Madeleine. “No less.”
Judith could hardly preserve a grave countenance while this bargaining was going on between the rich Miss Porter and her funny little Southern friend.
“I think that’s too much,” declared Millicent.
“Not at all. The work requires care and, as you say, reliability. It might be stolen, you know.”
Madeleine snapped her eyes.
“Very well, then,” said Millicent in a resigned tone of voice. “It’s a great deal to pay, but I suppose I can’t do any better. I hear you do everything well, Miss Petit.”
“Miss Blount will do this,” answered Madeleine. “If I do things well, she does them better. Now, where do you want them cleaned? Down here or up at your place?”
“Oh, I would never let them out of my studio,” cried Millicent. “She must come there, where she can be under my eye.”
“But – ” objected Judith, and paused at a glance from Madeleine.
It would be a crushing blow to her pride for her to go back to her old rooms and rub tarnished silver for this perfectly insufferable Millicent Porter. Yet fifteen dollars loomed up as quite a considerable sum, and, with five dollars added, could be paid to the stationery man on account.
Did Judith realize in her secret soul that the bitter dose she was now swallowing was only a dose of the same medicine she had once forced others to swallow?
“Very well, then,” said Madeleine, “we’ll give you as much of Friday and Saturday as will be necessary. We’ll take a lunch up on Friday so that we won’t have to come back for supper – ”
She waited a moment, wondering if Millicent would not invite them to supper at the Beta Phi. Hospitality was so much a part of her upbringing that it was impossible to conceive it lacking in others.
“I thought Miss Blount was to do the work.”
“She will. I shall work under her as assistant rubber.”
So, the bargain was clinched and Millicent departed.
“Disgusting little reptile!” cried Judith when the sounds of her footsteps died away in the hall and the door banged behind her.
Could Judith forget that she herself had once belonged to that overbearing class?
“Don’t get all stirred up, Judith, it’s bad for your digestion,” ejaculated Madeleine. “That girl is nothing but a mere ripple on the surface. She’s ridiculous, but there’s no harm in her. I am really sorry for her, because she doesn’t belong anywhere. She could never make a friend, and she will never know what it is to be really liked. She thinks she’s a genius because she’s learned how to beat out a few tawdry silver chains, and as soon as she finishes one she locks it up in a box and takes it out about once a decade to look it over. Why, she’s just a poor, starved, little creature without a spark of generosity in her soul. What does she know about living and happiness?
“You and I know how to live,” Madeleine continued, flourishing her iron. “We’re in the procession. We’re moving on, learning and progressing. We’re going up all the time. I tell you the highest peak in the Himalayas is not higher than my ambitions. And I intend to take you with me, Judith, and when we get to the top we’ll look back and see poor, little Millicent Porter, shriveled to nothing at the bottom!”
Judith gave a strange, hysterical laugh. Suddenly she flew across the room and embraced her friend.
“You could make me do anything, Madeleine,” she cried. “Scale the Himalayas or cut a tunnel through them.” Taking her friend’s small, charming face between her two hands, she looked her in the eyes: “Madeleine,” she said, “did you know I used to be a blind girl? You have healed me. I am beginning to see things as they are.”
