She went up into old Mrs. Rhynde’s room.  She knew Ray and Dot were busy.  She found the old lady’s knitting work all in a snarl; stitches dropped and twisted.

Some coals had rolled out upon the hearth, and the sun had got round so as to strike across her where she sat.

The grandmother was waiting patiently, closing her eyes, and resting them, letting the warm sun lie upon her folded hands like a friend’s touch.  One of the girls would be up soon.

Marion came in softly, brushed up the hearth, laid the sticks and embers together, made the fire-place bright.  She changed the blinds; lowered one, raised another; kept the sunshine in the room, but shielded away the dazzle that shot between face and fingers.  She left the shade with careful note, just where it let the warm beam in upon those quiet hands.  Some instinct told her not to come between them and that heavenly enfolding.

She took the knitting-work and straightened it; raveled down, and picked up, and with nimble stitches restored the lost rows.

Mrs. Rhynde looked up at her and smiled.

Then she offered to read.  She had not read a word aloud from a printed page since that night in Loweburg.

The old lady wanted a hymn.  Marion read “He leadeth me.”  The book opened of itself to that place.  She read it as one whose soul went searching into the words to find what was in them, and bring it forth.  Of Marion Kent, sitting in the chair with the book in her hand, she thought—­she remembered—­nothing.  Her spirit went from out of her, into spiritual places.  So she followed the words with her voice, as one really reading; interpreting as she went.  All her elocution had taught her nothing like this before.  It had not touched the secret of the instant receiving and giving again; it had only been the trick of saying out, which is no giving at all.

“Thank you, dear,” said the soft toothless voice.  “That’s very pretty reading.”

Dot came in, and she went away.

She had done a little “errand for her mother.”  A very little one; she did not deserve, yet, that more should be given her to do; but her heart went up saying tenderly, remorsefully,—­“For your sake.”

And back into her heart came the fulfillment of the promise,—­“He that doeth it in the name of a disciple, shall receive a disciple’s reward.”

These comforts, these reprievals, came to her; then again, she went down into the blackness of the old memories, the old self-accusations.

After she had found her way to Luclarion Grapp’s, she used sometimes, when these things seized her, to tie on her bonnet, pull down her thick veil, and crying and whispering behind it as she went,—­“Mother!  Susie! do you know how I love you now? how sorry I am?” would hurry down, through the busy streets, to the Neighbors.

“Give me something to do,” she would say, when she got there.