Kitabı oku: «The Letter of Credit», sayfa 13

Days went on. At last one day Mrs. Busby said it was no use to wait any longer for the mantua-makers; Rotha might as well come down and have her dinner with the family. She could not stay in the drawing room of course, until she was decently dressed; but she might as well come to dinner. Rotha could not understand why so much could not have been granted from the first; there was nobody at the dinner table but her aunt and cousin and Mr. Busby. Mr. Busby was a very tall, thin man, always busy with newspapers or sheets of manuscript; whose "Good morning, my dear!" in that peculiar husky voice of his, was nearly all Rotha ever heard him say. He took his breakfast, or his dinner, and went off to his study at once.

Rotha climbed the stairs to Mrs. Busby's dressing room, after the meal was over, and sat down to think. She was consuming herself in impatience and fretting. By and by Lesbia came in to see to the fire.

"Lesbia," said Rotha with sudden resolution, "will you do something for me?" She looked at the girl eagerly.

"Mebbe, miss. Like to know what 'tis, fust."

"It is only, to tell me something," said Rotha lowering her voice.

"Aint nothin' harder 'n to tell things," said the girl. "That's the hardest thing I know."

"It isn't hard, if you are willing."

"Don' know about that. Well, fire away, Miss Rotha. What you want?"

Rotha went first to the door and shut it. Then came back and stood by the table where Lesbia was lighting the gas drop.

"Lesbia, I want you to tell me – You always open the door, don't you?"

"'Cept when I aint there."

"But in the evenings you do?"

"I'm pretty likely to, miss – if it aint my evening out."

"I want you to tell me – " Rotha lowered her voice to a whisper, – "if Mr.

Southwode has been here lately?"

Lesbia stood silent, considering.

"You know him? You know Mr. Southwode?"

"He brought you here the fust, didn't he?"

"Yes. Yes, that is he. When was he here last?"

"Don't just 'member."

"But about when? Two weeks or three weeks ago?"

"Well, 'pears to me as if I'd seen him later 'n that."

"When, Lesbia? Oh do tell me! do tell me!"

"Why he aint nothin' particular to you, is he?"

"He is everything to me. He is the only friend I have got in the world.

When was he here, Lesbia?"

"He's a mighty handsome gentleman, with hair lighter than your'n, and a mustaches?"

"Yes. He came with me that first day. Tell me, Lesbia!"

"But Miss Rotha, I can't see what you want to know fur?"

"Never mind. I tell you, he is all the friend I have got; and I'm afraid something is wrong, because I don't see him."

"I reckon there is," said Lesbia, not reassuringly.

"What?"

"Mrs. Busby will kill me."

"No, I shall not tell her you told me. O Lesbia, Lesbia, speak, speak!"

Lesbia glanced at the girl and saw her intense excitement, and seemed doubtful.

"You'll be so mad, you'll go tellin' the fust thing," she said.

Rotha sat down, in silence now, and gazed in Lesbia's face with her own growing white. Lesbia seemed at last overcome.

"He was here last week, and he was here this week," she said.

"This week! – and last week too. What day this week, Lesbia?"

"This here is Friday, aint it. Blessed if I kin keep the run o' the days.

Let us see – Mr. Southwode was here the last time, Tuesday."

"Tuesday? And I was here studying."

"Then you don't know?" said Lesbia eyeing her. "He's done gone away."

"What do you mean? That can't be."

"He's done gone, miss. Sailed Wednesday. I heerd 'em talking about it at dinner. His name was in the list, they was sayin'; in the papers."

"Sailed Wednesday? O where to, Lesbia?"

"Don' know, miss; some place where the ships goes."

"England?"

"Mebbe. I doesn't know all de places on dis yere arth."

"How long is he going to be gone?"

"Can't tell dat, miss. I haint heerd nobody say. La, I dare say he'll come back. It's as easy to come as to go. Folks is allays goin' and comin'. But if you tell Mis' Busby, then I've done gone and lost my place, Miss Rotha."

Rotha stood still and said not a word more. But she turned so white that Lesbia looked on in alarm, expecting every moment she would faint. There was no faintness, however. Rotha was not one of those who lose present knowledge of misery in the weakness of a swoon. She turned white and even livid in the intensity of passion, the fury of rage and despair which held her; then, knowing that she must not betray Lesbia and that accordingly she must not meet anybody's eyes, she seized her books and rushed up stairs to her own little room.

It was dark there, but so much darker in the child's heart that she never noticed that. It was cold, yet not to her, for in her soul a fire was burning, hot enough to dispense with material warmth. She never missed that. But the walls of her room did seem to her a prison, a dreadful prison, from which she must flee if there were any place to flee to. Had her only refuge failed her? Was her one heart's treasure lost to her? Was the world empty, and all gone? The bewilderment of it almost equalled the pain. Rotha held her head in both hands and tried to find some hope, or some stay for her thoughts and for her feelings.

She charged it all presently with the certainty of intuition upon her aunt. For in her Rotha had not one particle of trust. She had received at her hands no unkind treatment, (what was the matter with the mantua- makers, though?) she had heard from her lips no unkind word; yet both would not have put such a distance between them as this want of trust did. It was Rotha's nature to despise where she could not trust; and here unhappily there was also the complication of fear. Somehow, she was sure, her aunt had done it; she had prevented Mr. Digby from seeing her; and now he was away, and how could she tell but cunning arrangements would be potent enough to keep him from seeing her evermore? Any reason for such machinations Rotha indeed failed to divine; why her aunt should desire to keep them apart, was a mere mystery; all the same, she had done it; and the chances were she would choose to do it permanently. Mr. Digby had been duped, or baffled somehow; else he would never have left the country without seeing his charge. She did not know before that Mr. Digby could be duped, or baffled; but if once or twice, why not again.

She would write to him. Ah, she had not his address, that he was to have given her. He would write. Yes, but somebody else would get the letters. Rotha was of anything but a suspicious disposition, yet now suspicion after suspicion came in her mind. The possible moving cause for her aunt's action was entirely beyond her imagination; the action itself and the drift of it she discerned clearly. There rose in her a furious opposition and dislike towards her aunt, a storm of angry abhorrence. And yet, she was in Mrs. Busby's care, under her protection, and also – in her power. Rotha gnashed her teeth, mentally, as she reviewed the situation. But by degrees grief overweighed even anger and fear; grief so cutting, so desolating, so crushing, as the girl had hardly known in her life before; an agony of anguish which held her awake till late in the night; till feeling and sense were blunted with exhaustion, and in her misery she slept.

When the day came, Rotha awaked to a cold, dead sense of the state of things; the ashes of the fire that had burned so fiercely the night before; desolate and dreary as the ashes of a fire always are. She revolved while she was dressing her plan of action. She must have certain information from Mrs. Busby herself. She was certain indeed of what she had heard; but she must hear it from somebody besides Lesbia, and she must not betray Lesbia. She thought it all over, and went down stairs trembling in the excitement and the pain of what she had to do.

It was winter now in truth. The basement room where the family took their meals in ordinary, was a very warm and comfortable apartment; handsomely furnished; only Rotha always hated it for being half underground. The fire was burning splendidly; Mr. Busby sat in his easy chair at the side of the hearth next the light; Mrs. Busby was at the table preparing breakfast. Rotha stood by the fire and thought how she should begin. The sun shone very bright outside the windows. But New York had become a desert.

"Mr. Busby, will you come to the table?" said his wife. "Rotha, I am going to see about your cloak to-day."

Rotha could not say "thank you." She began to eat, for form's sake.

"What are you going to get her, mother?" Antoinette enquired.

"You can come along and see."

"Aunt Serena," said Rotha, trying to speak un-concernedly, "what has become of Mr. Digby – Mr. Southwode, I mean."

"I do not know, my dear," the lady answered smoothly.

"Why haven't I seen him?"

"My dear, you have not seen anybody. Some day I hope you will be able; but I begin to despair of the dress-makers."

"If my tailor served me so, I should give him up," said Mr. Busby's quick, husky utterance.

"Yes, papa, but you wouldn't, if there was only one tailor you liked."

"Isn't there more than one mantua-maker for all this big city?"

"My dear, Miss Hubbell suits me, and is uncommonly reasonable, for the quality of her work; and she has so much custom, we cannot get her without speaking long beforehand."

"Why don't you speak, then?"

"When was Mr. Digby – Mr. Southwode here, aunt Serena?" Rotha began again.

"A few nights ago. I do not recollect. Mr. Busby, as you go down town will you stop at Dubois's and order the piano tuner? The piano is quite out of tune. And I wish you would order me a bag of coffee, if you say you can get it more reasonably at your down town place."

"Very well, my dear." The words used to amuse Rotha, they rolled out so, brisk and sharp, like the discharge from a gun. To-day she was impatient.

"Aunt Serena, I have been wanting to see Mr. Southwode very much."

No answer. Mrs. Busby attended to her breakfast as if she did not hear.

"When can I?" Rotha persisted.

"I am sure, I cannot say. Mr. Busby, I will trouble you for a little of that sausage."

"This sausage has too much pepper in it, mamma."

"And too little of something else," added Mr. Busby.

"Of what, Mr. Busby?"

"That I do not know, my dear; it belongs to your department."

"But even the Chaldean magicians could not interpret the dream that was not told to them," Mrs. Busby suggested, with smiling satisfaction. "How can I have the missing quality supplied, if you cannot tell me what it is you miss?"

"You can divine, my dear, quite as well as the Chaldean magicians."

"Then if that is true, aunt Serena," Rotha put in desperately, "will you please tell me where Mr. Southwode is?"

"Her divining rod is not long enough for that," said Mr. Busby. "Mr.

Southwode is on the high seas somewhere, on his way to England."

"On the high seas!" Rotha repeated slowly.

"There was no occasion to mention that, Mr. Busby," said his wife. "Mr.

Southwode's movements are nothing to us."

"Seem to be something to Rotha," said the gentleman.

"You knew that," said Rotha, steadily. "Why did you keep it from me, aunt Serena?"

"I did not keep it from you," Mrs. Busby returned, bridling. "The papers are open. I did not speak of it, because Mr. Southwode and his affairs are no concern of yours, or of mine, and therefore are not interesting."

"Of yours? No! But they are all I have in the world!" said Rotha, with fire in her cheeks and in her eyes. Mrs. Busby went on with her breakfast and avoided looking at her. But Antoinette cried out.

"All she has in the world! Mr. Southwode! Pretty well for a young lady!

Mamma, do you hear that? Mr. Southwode is all she has in the world."

"Once hearing a silly thing is quite enough. You need not repeat it, Antoinette."

"Didn't he come to say good bye?" asked Rotha, her eyes blazing.

"I do not answer questions put in that tone," said Mrs. Busby, coldly.

"I know he did," said Rotha. "What did he go to England for, Mr. Busby?"

"Mr. Busby," said his wife, "I request you not to reply. Rotha is behaving improperly, and must be left to herself till she is better- mannered."

"I don't know, my dear," said the gentleman, rising and gathering his newspapers together, previous to taking his departure. "'Seems to me that's an open question – public, as you say. I do not see why you should not tell Rotha that Mr. Southwode is called home by the illness and probable death of his father. Good-morning, my dear!"

"Did you ever see anything like papa!" said Antoinette with an appealing look at her mother, as the door closed. "He don't mind you a bit, mamma."

Mrs. Busby's slight air of the head was more significant than words.

"He is the only fraction of a friend I have in this house," said Rotha. "But you needn't think, aunt Serena, that you can do what you like with Mr. Southwode and me. I belong to him, not to you; and he will come back, and then he will take me under his own care, and I will have nothing to do with you the rest of my life. I know you now. I thought I did before, and now I know. You let mamma want everything in the world; and now perhaps you will let me; but Mr. Southwode will take care of me, sooner or later, and I can wait, for I know him too."

Rotha left the room, unconsciously with the air of a tragedy queen. Alas, it was tragedy enough with her!

"Mamma!" said Antoinette. "Did you ever see anything like that?"

"I knew it was in her," Mrs. Busby said, keeping her composure in appearance.

"What will you do with her?"

"Let her alone a little," said Mrs. Busby icily. "Let her come to her senses."

"Will you go to get her cloak to-day?"

"I don't know why I should give myself any trouble about her. I will let her wait till she comes to her senses and humbles herself to me."

"Do you think she ever will?"

"I don't care, whether she does or not. It is all the same to me. You let her alone too, Antoinette."

"I will," said Antoinette. "I don't like spitfires. High! what a powder-magazine she is, mamma! Her eyes are enough to set fire to things sometimes."

"Don't use such an inelegant word, Antoinette. 'High!' How can you? Where did you get it?"

"You send me to school, mamma, to learn; and so I pick up a few things.

But do you think it is true, what she says about Mr. Southwode?"

"What?"

"That he will come and take her away from you."

"Not if I don't choose it,"

"And you will not choose it, will you?"

"Don't be foolish, Antoinette. Rotha will never see Mr. Southwode again.

She has defied me, and now she may take the consequences."

"But he will come back, mamma? He said so."

"I hope he will."

"Then he'll find Rotha, and she'll tell him her own story."

"Will you trust me to look after my own affairs? And get yourself ready to go out with me immediately."

CHAPTER XIV.
IN SECLUSION

Rotha climbed the three flights of stairs from the breakfast room, feeling that her aunt's house, and the world generally, had become a desert to her. She went up to her own little room, being very sure that neither in the warm dressing room on the second floor, nor indeed in any other, would she be welcome, or even perhaps tolerated. How should she be, after what had taken place? And how could she breathe, anyhow, in any atmosphere where her aunt was? Imprudent? had she been imprudent? Very possibly; she had brought matters to an unmanageable point, inconvenient for all parties; and she had broken through the cold reserve which it had been her purpose to maintain, and lost sight wholly of the principles by which it had Been Mr. Digby's wish that she should be guided. Rotha had a mental recognition of all this; but passion met it with simple defiance. She was not weeping; the fire at her heart scorched all tender moisture, though it would not keep her blood warm. The day was wintry indeed. Rotha pulled the coverlet off her bed and wrapped herself in it, and sat down to think.

Thinking, is too good a name to give to what for some time went on in Rotha's mind. She was rather looking at the procession of images which passion called up and sent succeeding one another through the chambers of her brain. It was a very dreary time with the girl. Her aunt's treachery, her cousin's coldness, Mr. Digby's pitiless desertion, her lonely, lonely place in the world, her unendurable dependence on people that did not love her; for just now her dependence on Mr. Digby had failed; it all rushed through and through Rotha's head, for all the world like the changing images in a kaleidoscope, which are but new combinations, eternally renewed, of the same changeless elements. At first they went through Rotha's head in a kind of storm; gradually, for very weariness, the storm laid itself, and cold reality and sober reason had the field.

But what could reason do with the reality? In other words, what step was now to take? What was to be done? Rotha could not see. She was at present at open war with her aunt. Yes, she allowed, that had not been exactly prudent; but it would have had to come, sooner or later. She could not live permanently on false social grounds; as well break through them at once. But what now? What ground did she expect to stand and move on now? She could not leave her aunt's house, for she had no other home to go to. How was she to stay in it, if she made no apology or submission? And I cannot do that, said the girl to herself. Apology indeed! It is she who ought to humble herself to me, for it is she who has wronged me, bitterly, meanly. Passion renewed the storm, for a little while. But by degrees Rotha came to be simply cold and tired and miserable. What to do she did not know.

Nobody was at home to luncheon. She knew this, and got some refreshment from Lesbia, and also warmed herself through at the dressing-room fire. But when the door bell announced the return of her aunt and cousin, she sped away up stairs again and wrapped herself in her coverlet, and waited. She waited till it grew dark. She was not called to dinner, and saw that she would not be. Rotha fed upon indignation, which furnished her a warm meal; and then somebody knocked softly at her door. Lesbia had brought a plate with some cold viands.

"I'll fetch it agin by and by," she whispered. "I'm allays agin seein' folks starve. What's the matter, Miss Rotha?"

Lesbia had heard one side down stairs, and impartially was willing now to hear the other. Rotha's natural dignity however never sought such solace of her troubles.

"Thank you, Lesbia," she simply said. "My aunt is vexed with me."

"She's vexed worse'n ever I seen her. What you gone and done, Miss Rotha?"

"It can't be helped," said Rotha. "She and I do not think alike."

"It's convenientest not to quarrel with Mrs. Busby if you live in the house with her," said Lesbia. "She's orful smart, she is. But she and me allays thinks just alike, and so I get on first rate with her."

"That's a very good way, for you," said Rotha.

She went to bed, dulled that night with pain and misery, and slept the night through. When the light of a bright Sunday morning awoke her, she opened her eyes again to the full dreariness of her situation. So terribly dreary and cold at heart Rotha had never felt. Deserted by her one friend – and with that thought Rotha broke down and cried as if she would break her heart. But hearts are tough, and do not break so easily. The necessity of getting dressed before breakfast obliged her to check her passion of grief and dry her eyes; though that she did not; the tears kept dripping on her hands and into her basin of water; but she finished dressing, and then queried what she should do about going to the breakfast-table. She was very uncertain whether she would be allowed there. However, it was disagreeable, but the attempt must be made; she must find out whether it was war to the knife or not. And although the thought choked her, she was hungry; and be it the bread of charity, and her aunt's charity to boot, she could not get along without it. She went down stairs, rather late. The family were at breakfast.

Her aunt did not look at her. Antoinette stared at her. Mr. Busby, as usual, took no notice. Rotha came up to the side of the table and stood there, changing colour somewhat.

"I do not know," she said, "if I am to be allowed to come to breakfast. I came to see."

Mrs. Busby made no answer.

"Polite – " said Antoinette.

"Eh?" said Mr. Busby looking up from a letter, "what's that? Sit down, my dear, you are late. Hold your plate – "

As nobody interfered, Rotha did so and sat down to her meal. Mrs. Busby said nothing whatever. Perhaps she felt she had pushed matters pretty far; perhaps she avoided calling her husband's attention any further to the subject. She made no remark about anything, till Mr. Busby had left the room; nor then immediately. When she did speak, it was in her hard, measured way.

"As you present yourself before me this morning, Rotha, I may hope that you are prepared to make me a proper apology."

"What have I done, aunt Serena?"

"Do you ask me? You have forgotten strangely the behaviour due from you to me."

"I did not forget it – " said Rotha slowly.

"Will you give me an excuse for your conduct, then?"

"Yes," said Rotha. "Because, aunt Serena, you had forgotten so utterly the treatment due from you to me."

Mrs. Busby flushed a little. Still she commanded herself She always did.

"Mamma, she's pretty impudent!" said Antoinette.

"I always make allowances, and you must learn to do so, Antoinette, for people who have never learned any manners."

Rotha was stung, but she confessed to herself that passion had made her overleap the bounds which she had purposed, and Mr. Digby had counselled, her behaviour should observe. So she was now silent.

"However," Mrs. Busby went on, "it is quite necessary that any one living in my family and sheltered by my roof, should pay me the respect which they owe to me."

"I will always pay all I owe," said Rotha deliberately, "so far as I have anything to pay it with."

"And in case the supply fails," said Mrs. Busby, her voice trembling a little, "don't you think you had better avoid going deeper into debt?"

"What do I owe you, aunt Serena?" asked the girl.

Mrs. Busby saw the gathering fire in the dark eyes, and did not desire to bring on another explosion. She assumed an impassive air, looked away from Rotha, rose and began to put her cups together on the tea-board, and rang for the tub of hot water.

"I leave that to your own sense to answer," she said. "But if you are to stay in my house, I beg you to understand, you must behave yourself to me with all proper civility and good manners. Else I will turn you into the street."

Rotha recognized the necessity for a certain decency of exterior form at least, if she and her aunt were to continue under one roof; and so, though her tongue was ready with an answer, she did not at once make it. She rose, and was about quitting the room, when the fire in her blazed up again.

"It is where mother would have been, if it had not been for other friends," she said.

She opened the door as she spoke, and toiled up the long stairs to her room; for when the heart is heavy somehow one's feet are not light. She went to her cold little room and sat down. The sunshine was very bright outside, and church bells were ringing. No going to church for her, nor would there have been in any case; she had no garments fit to go out in. Would she ever have them? Rotha queried. The church bells hurt her heart; she wished they would stop ringing; they sounded clear and joyous notes, and reminded her of happy times past. Medwayville, her father, her mother, peace and honour, and latterly Mr. Southwode, and all his kindness and teaching and his affection. It was too much. The early Sunday morning was spent by Rotha in an agony of weeping and lamentation; silent, however; she made no noise that could be heard down stairs where Mrs. Busby and Antoinette were dressing to go to church. The intensity of her passion again by and by wore itself out; and when the last bells had done ringing, and the patter of feet was silenced in the streets, Rotha crept down to the empty dressing room, feeling blue and cold, to warm herself. She shivered, she stretched her arms to the warmth of the fire, she was chilled to the core, with a chill that was yet more mental than physical Alone, and stripped of everything, and everybody gone that she loved. What was she to do? how was she to live? She was struggling with a burden of realities and trying to make them seem unreal, trying for an outlook of hope or comfort in the darkness of her prospects. In vain; Mr. Digby was gone, and with him all her strength and her reliance. He was gone; nobody could tell when he would come back; perhaps never; and she could not write to him, and his letters would never get to her. Never; she was sure of it. Mrs. Busby would never let them get further than her own hands. So everything was worse than she had ever feared it could be.

Sitting there on the rug before the fire, and with her teeth chattering, partly from real cold and partly from the nervous exhaustion, there came to her suddenly something Mr. Digby had once said to her. If she should come to see a time when she would have nobody to depend on; when her world would be wholly a desert; all gone that she had loved or trusted. It has come now! – she thought to herself; even he, who I thought would never fail me, he has failed. He said he would not fail me, but he has failed. I am alone; I have nobody any more. Then he told me —

She went back and gathered it up in her memory, what he had told her to do then. Then if she would seek the Lord, seek him with her whole heart, she would find him; and finding him, she would find good again. The poor, sore heart caught at the promise. I will seek him, she suddenly said; I will seek till I find; I have nothing else now.

The resolve was as earnest as it was sudden. Doubtless the way had been preparing for it, in her mother's and her father's teachings and prayers and example, and in Mr. Digby's words and kindness and his example; she remembered now the look of his eyes as he told her the Lord Jesus would do all she trusted him to do. Yet the determination was extremely sudden to Rotha herself. And as the meeting of two currents, whether in the waters or in the air or the human mind, generally raises a commotion, so this flowing in of light and promise upon the midst of her despair almost broke Rotha's heart. The tears shed this time, however, though abundant, were less bitter; and Rotha raised her head and dashed the drops away, and ran up stairs to fetch her mother's Bible and begin her quest upon the spot. Lying there upon the rug in her aunt's dressing room, she began it.

She began with a careful consideration of the three marked passages. The one in John especially held her. "He that hath my commandments and keepeth them, he it is that loveth me." – I do not love Him, thought Rotha, for I do not know Him; but I must begin, I suppose, with keeping his commandments. Now the thing is, to find out what. —

She opened her book at hap hazard, lying on the rug there with it before her. A leaf or two aimlessly turned, – and her eye fell on these words:

"And in that day shall the deaf hear the words of the book, and the eyes of the blind shall see out of obscurity and out of darkness. The meek also shall increase their joy in the Lord, and the poor among men shall rejoice in the Holy One of Israel."

I am poor enough, thought Rotha, while soft warm tears streamed afresh from her eyes; – and deaf enough, and blind enough too, I have been; but meek? – I guess I'm not meek.

Turning over a leaf or two, her eyes were caught by the thirty fifth chapter of Isaiah, and she read it all. There was the promise for the deaf and the blind again; Rotha applied that to herself unhesitatingly; but the rest of the chapter she could not well understand. Except one thing; that the way of the blessed people is a "way of holiness." And also the promise in the last verse, which seemed to be an echo of those words of Jesus – "He that cometh to me shall never hunger, and he that believeth on me shall never thirst." And Rotha was so hungry, and so thirsty! She paused just there, and covering her eyes with her hand, made one of the first real prayers, perhaps, she had ever prayed. It was a dumb stretching out of her hands for the food she was starving for; not much more; but it was eagerly put in the name of Christ, and such cries he hears. She turned over a few more leaves and stopped.

"I the Lord have called thee in righteousness, and will hold thine hand, and will keep thee, and give thee for a covenant of the people, for a light of the Gentiles; to open the blind eyes, to bring out the prisoners from the prison, and them that sit in darkness out of the prison house."

Who could that be? Rotha knew enough to guess that it could mean but one, even the great Deliverer. And a little further on she saw other words which encouraged her.

"I will bring the blind by a way that they know not; I will lead them in paths they have not known; I will make darkness light before them, and crooked things straight. These things will I do unto them, and not forsake them."

So many promises to the blind, Rotha said to herself; and that means me. I don't think I am meek, but I know I am blind. – Then on the very next leaf she read —

"I have blotted out, as a thick cloud, thy transgressions, and as a cloud thy sins; return unto me; for I have redeemed thee."

Redeemed, that means, bought back, said Rotha; and I know who has done it, too. I suppose that is how he delivered the prisoners out of the prison house. Well, if he has redeemed me, I ought to belong to him, – and I will! I do not know much, but there is another promise; he will bring the blind by a way they have not known, and will make darkness light before them. Now what I have to do, – yes, I am redeemed, and I will be redeemed; and I belong to him who has redeemed me, of course. "He that hath my commandments and keepeth them" – what are they?

She thought she must look in the New Testament for them; and not knowing where to look in particular, she turned to the first chapter. It did not seem to contain much that concerned her, till she came to the 21st verse.