“Oh, dear,” ejaculated Marjorie.

“Father got men out and they hunted, but they never found the robbers or the baby.  If Susannah didn’t cry nobody ever did!  She had six other children but this baby was so cunning!  We used to feed it and play with it and had cried our eyes sore the day it died.  But we never found it.”

“It wasn’t so bad as if it had been alive,” comforted Marjorie, “they couldn’t hurt it.  And it was in Heaven before they ran away with the body.  But I don’t wonder the poor mother was half frantic.”

“Poor Susannah, she used to talk about it as long as she lived.”

“Was she a slave?”

“Of course, but we were good to her and took care of her till she died.  My father gave her to me when I was married.  That was years and years and years before we came to this state.  I was fifteen when I was married—­”

“Fifteen,” Marjorie almost shouted.  That was queerer than having so many step-mothers.

“And my husband had four children, and Lucilla was just my age, the oldest, she was in my class at school.  But we got on together and kept house together till she married and went away.  Yes, I’ve had things happen to me.  People called it our golden wedding when we’d been married fifty years, and then he died, the next year, and I’ve lived with my children since.  I’ve had my ups and downs as you’ll have if you live to be most a hundred.”

“You’ve had some ups as well as downs,” said Marjorie.

“Yes, I’ve had some good times, but not many, not many.”

Marjorie answered indignantly:  “I think you have good times now, you have a good home and everybody is kind to you.”

“Yes, but I can’t see and Hepsie don’t talk much.”

“This afternoon as I was coming along I saw an old hunch-backed woman raking sticks together to make a bonfire in a field, don’t you think she had a hard time?”

“Perhaps she liked to; I don’t believe anybody made her, and she could see the bonfire.”

Marjorie’s eyes were pitiful; it must be hard to be blind.

“Shall I read to you now?” she asked hurriedly.

“How is the fire?  Isn’t it most time to put the kettle on?  I shan’t sleep a wink if I don’t have hasty pudding to-night and I don’t like it raw, either.”

“It shan’t be raw,” laughed Marjorie, springing up.  “I’ll see to the fire and fill the kettle and then I’ll read to you.”

The old lady fumbled at her work till Marjorie came back to her with the family Bible in her hands.

She laid the Bible on the table and moved her chair to the table.

“Where shall I read?”

“About Jacob and all his children and all his troubles, I never get tired of that.  He said few and evil had been his days and he was more than most a hundred.”

“Well,” said Marjorie, lingering over the word and slowly turning back to Genesis.  She had opened to John, she wanted to read to the grumbling old heart that was “afraid” some of the comforting words of Jesus:  “Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid.”