But it would also happen occasionally that one of the tenderer ewe-lambs of the flock needed comfort from the presence of the shepherd.  Poor Mrs. Stoker noticed, or thought she noticed, that the good man had more leisure for the youthful and blooming sister than for the more discreet and venerable matron or spinster.  The sitting was apt to be longer; and the worthy pastor would often linger awhile about the door, to speed the parting guest, perhaps, but a little too much after the fashion of young people who are not displeased with each other, and who often find it as hard to cross a threshold single as a witch finds it to get over a running stream.  More than once, the pallid, faded wife had made an errand to the study, and, after a keen look at the bright young cheeks, flushed with the excitement of intimate spiritual communion, had gone back to her chamber with her hand pressed against her heart, and the bitterness of death in her soul.

The end of all these bodily and mental trials was, that the minister’s wife had fallen into a state of habitual invalidism, such as only women, who feel all the nerves which in men are as insensible as telegraph-wires, can experience.

The doctor did not know what to make of her case,—­whether she would live or die,—­whether she would languish for years, or, all at once, roused by some strong impression, or in obedience to some unexplained movement of the vital forces, take up her bed and walk.  For her bed had become her home, where she lived as if it belonged to her organism.  There she lay, a not unpleasing invalid to contemplate, always looking resigned, patient, serene, except when the one deeper grief was stirred, always arrayed with simple neatness, and surrounded with little tokens that showed the constant presence with her of tasteful and thoughtful affection.  She did not know, nobody could know, how steadily, how silently all this artificial life was draining the veins and blanching the cheek of her daughter Bathsheba, one of the everyday, air-breathing angels without nimbus or aureole who belong to every story which lets us into a few households, as much as the stars and the flowers belong to everybody’s verses.

Bathsheba’s devotion to her mother brought its own reward, but it was not in the shape of outward commendation.  Some of the more censorious members of her father’s congregation were severe in their remarks upon her absorption in the supreme object of her care.  It seems that this had prevented her from attending to other duties which they considered more imperative.  They did n’t see why she shouldn’t keep a Sabbath-school as well as the rest, and as to her not comin’ to meetin’ three times on Sabbath day like other folks, they couldn’t account for it, except because she calculated that she could get along without the means of grace, bein’ a minister’s daughter.  Some went so far as to doubt if she had ever experienced religion, for all she was a professor.  There