gone but Lutie, and the three knelt together as Mr. Mackenzie poured out a thanksgiving for the newborn child of God.
So Sherrill went home that night with real news for Aunt Pat that kept that old saint awake half the night praising her heavenly Father.
Chapter 18
Presently the days settled down into regular normal living again, the lovely pansies had faded, and nothing more had been heard from the stranger.
Sherrill tried to put him out of her mind, tried not to start and look interested whenever the doorbell rang or a package arrived. She tried to curb the feeling of disappointment each night when she went up to her room, that he had not come that day.
“He has forgotten us long ago,” she told herself. “It was a mere incident in his life. He was just a passing stranger. He probably felt that he had done his entire duty toward us by sending those flowers. They were only sort of a bread-and-butter letter, and saved him the trouble of writing one. He has likely gone back to Chicago by this time and gotten immersed in business again. If he ever thinks of us again, it will be to laugh sometime with his friends and tell about the unusual wedding he once attended. Why should I be so silly as to keep on watching for him?”
But still she could not forget the stranger. And still there came no word of the lost jewels.
Aunt Pat kept a watchful eye upon Sherrill. She sent for maps and guide books. They studied routes of travel, considered various cruises, planned motor trips, and all the while watched over Lutie’s family, agreeing that they must not go away anywhere till the operations were all over and the invalids back at home doing well.
When the third Monday night came, Lutie was up at the hospital waiting to hear the result of her mother’s operation. Lutie’s mother was in a very serious condition. Sherrill was restless and finally decided to go to the Bible class alone.
To her surprise the whole loving group of people at the mission knew about Lutie’s anxiety and spoke tenderly of her. When the time of prayer came, Sherrill listened in wonder to the prayers of faith that went up from many hearts for the life of Lutie’s mother. Sherrill was amazed that they dared pray so confidently, and yet always with that submissive “Nevertheless, Thy will, not ours, be done.”
She had a feeling as she listened that she had been sitting in a dark place all her life, and that during the last three weeks light had slowly begun to break. It seemed that tonight the light was like glory all around her.
These people actually lived with God, referred everything to Him, wanted nothing that He did not send. They were in a distinct and startling sense a separated people, and she was beginning to long with all her heart that she might truly be one with them.
The meeting was more than half over, and the lesson for the evening was well under way when the woman who sat next to Sherrill on the end seat next to the aisle, with a whispered word about catching her train, got up silently and slipped out. A moment later Sherrill became aware that someone else had taken her place, someone who had possibly been standing back by the door.
He came so silently, so unobtrusively, that Sherrill did not look up or notice him till he sat down, and then suddenly she seemed to feel rather than see that he was looking earnestly at her.
Startled, she glanced up to find herself looking straight into Graham Copeland’s smiling eyes!
Then Sherrill’s face lighted with a great gladness, and something flashed from eye to eye. He reached quietly over and clasped her hand, just a quick clinging pressure that no one would have noticed, and her fingers returned it. Then something flashed again from hand to hand, some understanding and knowledge of mutual joy.
It was like finding a dear old friend after having lost him. It was the knowledge that everything precious in the world had not been lost after all.
She lifted another shy glance and caught that look in his eyes again, and was thrilled to think he was here. What a wonderful thing this was! Never in all her acquaintance with Carter McArthur had there been anything like this, but she did not think of that now. She was just glad, glad, glad!
He took hold of one side