It was as if Susie thought of it, and gave her the chance!  She read secret, loving meanings now, in things that had their meanings only for her.  She believed in spirit-communication,—­for she knew it came; but in its own beautiful, soul-to-soul ways; not by any outward spells.

She went for the water; she found a piece of ice and put in it.  She came and raised the little head tenderly,—­the child was hurt in the back, and could not be lifted up,—­and held the goblet to the gentle lips; lips patient, like Sue’s!

“O, you move me so nice!  You give me the drink so handy!”

The beauty was in Marion’s face still, warm with an inward joy; the child’s eyes followed her as she rose from bending over her.

“Real pretty,” she said again, softly, liking to look at her.  And “real” was beginning to be the word, at last, for Marion Kent.

The glory of that poem she had read, thinking only of her own petty triumph, came suddenly over her thought by some association,—­she could not trace out how.  Its grand meaning was a meaning, all at once, for her.  With a changed phrasing, like a heavenly inspiration, the last line sprang up in her mind, as if somebody stood by and spoke it:—­

  “These are the lambs of the sacrifice:  this is the court
      of the King!”

CHAPTER XVIII.

BRICKFIELD FARMS.

It was a rainy, desolate day.

It had rained the day before yesterday, and yesterday, and half cleared up last night; then this morning it had sullenly and tiresomely begun again.

All the forenoon it grew worse; in the afternoon, heavy, pelting, streaming showers came down, filling the Kiln Hollow with mist, and hiding the tops of the hills about it with low, rolling, ever-gathering and resolving clouds.

It seemed as if all the autumn joy were over; as if the pleasant days were done with till another year.  After this, the cold would set in.

Mrs. Jeffords had a bright fire built in Mrs. Argenter’s room, another in the family sitting-room.  It looked cosy; but it reminded the sojourners that they had not simply to draw themselves into winter-quarters, and be comfortable; their winter-quarters were yet to seek.

Sylvie had been cracking a plateful of butternuts; picking out meats, I mean, from the cracked nuts, to make a plateful; and that, if you know butternuts, you know is no small task.  She brought them to her mother, with some grated maple sugar sprinkled among and over them.

“This is what you liked so much at the Shakers’ in Lebanon,” she said.  “See if it isn’t as nice as theirs, I think it is fresher.  Here is a tiny little pickle-fork, to eat with.”

Mrs. Argenter took the offered dainty.

“You are a dear child,” she said.  “Come and eat some too.”

“O, I ate as I went along.  Now, I’ll read to you.”  And she took up “Blindpits,” which her mother had laid down.