a sort of cathedral light over what she felt was holy now.
Rescued from her dim and servile city life--brought out into the light
and beauty she had mutely longed for--feeling care and kindliness about
her for the long-time harshness and oppression she had borne--she was
like a spirit newly entered into heaven, that needs no priestly
ministration any more. Every breath drew in a life and teaching purer
than human words.
And then the words she _did_ hear were Divine. Miss Henderson did no
preaching--scarcely any lip teaching, however brief. She broke the bread
of life God gave her, as she cut her daily loaf and shared it--letting
each soul, God helping, digest it for itself.
Glory got hold of some old theology, too, that she could but
fragmentarily understand but that mingled itself--as all we gather does
mingle, not uselessly--with her growth. She found old books among Miss
Henderson's stores, that she read and mused on. She trembled at the
warnings, and reposed in the holy comforts of Doddridge's "Rise and
Progress," and Baxter's "Saint's Rest." She traveled to the Holy City,
above all, with Bunyan's Pilgrim. And then, Sunday after Sunday, she
heard the simple Christian preaching of an old and simple Christian man.
Not terrible--but earnest; not mystical--but high; not lax--but liberal;
and this fused and tempered all.
So "things had happened" for Glory. So God had cared for this, His
child. So, according to His own Will--not any human plan or forcing--
she grew.
Aunt Faith washed up the breakfast cups, dusted and "set to rights" in
the rooms where, to the young Faith's eyes, there seemed such order
already as could not be righted, made up a nice little pudding for
dinner, and then, taking down her shawl and silk hood, and putting on
her overshoes, announced herself ready for Cross Corners.
"Though it's all cross corners to me, child, sure enough. I suppose it's
none of my business, but I can't think what you're up to."
"Not up to any great height, yet, auntie. But I'm growing," said Faith,
merrily, and with meaning somewhat beyond the letter.
They went out at the back door, which opened on a little footpath down
the sudden green slope behind, and stretched across the field,
diagonally, to a bar place and stile at the opposite corner. Here the
roads from five different directions met and crossed, which gave the
locality its name.
Opposite the stile at which they came out, across the shady lane that
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