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Page 28
She said it slowly and in a singsong voice, as if she were measuring the
words off to imaginary notes. "I thought about that the night I started. I
wished I knew where that rock was. Is there a rock anywhere that they call
the Rock of Ages?"
The young man was visibly embarrassed. He wanted to laugh, but he would
not hurt her in that way again. He was not accustomed to talking
religion; yet here by this strange girl's side it seemed perfectly natural
that he, who knew so very little experimentally himself about it, should
be trying to explain the Rock of Ages to a soul in need. All at once it
flashed upon him that it was for just such souls in need as this one that
the Rock of Ages came into the world.
"I've heard the song. Yes, I think they sing it in all churches. It's
quite common. No, there isn't any place called Rock of Ages. It
refers--that is, I believe--why, you see the thing is figurative--that is,
a kind of picture of things. It refers to the Deity."
"O! Who is that?" asked the girt.
"Why--God." He tried to say it as if he had been telling her it was Mr.
Smith or Mr. Jones, but somehow the sound of the word on his lips thus
shocked him. He did not know how to go on. "It just means God will take
care of people."
"O!" she said, and this time a light of understanding broke over her face.
"But," she added, "I wish I knew what it meant, the meeting, and why they
did it. There must be some reason. They wouldn't do it for nothing. And
how do they know it's all so? Where did they find it out?"
The man felt he was beyond his depth; so he sought to change the subject.
"I wish you would tell me about yourself," he said gently. "I should like
to understand you better. We have travelled together for a good many hours
now, and we ought to know more about each other."
"What do you want to know?" She asked it gravely. "There isn't much to
tell but what I've told you. I've lived on a mountain all my life, and
helped mother. The rest all died. The baby first, and my two brothers, and
father, and mother, and then John. I said the prayer for John, and ran
away."
"Yes, but I want to know about your life. You know I live in the East
where everything is different. It's all new to me out here. I want to
know, for instance, how you came to talk so well. You don't talk like a
girl that never went to school. You speak as if you had read and studied.
You make so few mistakes in your English. You speak quite correctly. That
is not usual, I believe, when people have lived all their lives away from
school, you know. You don't talk like the girls I have met since I came
out here."
"Father always made me speak right. He kept at every one of us children
when we said a word wrong, and made us say it over again. It made him
angry to hear words said wrong. He made mother cry once when she said
'done' when she ought to have said 'did.' Father went to school once, but
mother only went a little while. Father knew a great deal, and when he was
sober he used to teach us things once in a while. He taught me to read. I
can read anything I ever saw."
"Did you have many books and magazines?" he asked innocently.
"We had three books!" she answered proudly, as if that were a great many.
"One was a grammar. Father bought it for mother before they were married,
and she always kept it wrapped up in paper carefully. She used to get it
out for me to read in sometimes; but she was very careful with it, and
when she died I put it in her hands. I thought she would like to have it
close to her, because it always seemed so much to her. You see father
bought it. Then there was an almanac, and a book about stones and earth. A
man who was hunting for gold left that. He stopped over night at our
house, and asked for some, thing to eat. He hadn't any money to pay for
it; so he left that book with us, and said when he found the gold he would
come and buy it back again. But he never came back."
"Is that all that you have ever read?" he asked compassionately.
"O, no! We got papers sometimes. Father would come home with a whole paper
wrapped around some bundle. Once there was a beautiful story about a girl;
but the paper was torn in the middle, and I never knew how it came out."
There was great wistfulness in her voice. It seemed to be one of the
regrets of her girlhood that she did not know how that other girl in the
story fared. All at once she turned to him.
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