[Illustration: 9198]
OSEPPIINE had stood in the doorway of the little cottage half a dozen
times within the last hour peering anxiously down the road in search of
Flutters, and now that she discovered him coming cross-cut through the
meadow near which he had left the wagon, no one could have told how
relieved she felt.
“Oh, Flutters, I'm so glad you've come!” she called softly, as soon as
he came within speaking distance, and then immediately turned back into
the room. Flutters followed her on tip-toe, for she had motioned him to
come in quietly. “What is the matter?” he asked, going close to Bobbin's
cot.
“Oh, I don t know,” Josephine whispered, with tears of anxious sympathy
filling her gray eyes; “we had had a lovely talk together, and then he
asked me to read out of a book, your Prayer-Book, he said it was, and so
I read ever so many psalms from the Psalter, till suddenly looking up I
saw that he was in great pain, and when I spoke to him he seemed neither
to see nor hear me. In a little while the pain passed over, and ever
since he has lain there so still that I have had to put my ear down very
close to make sure that he was breathing.”
“Dear old Bobbin,” said Flutters, stroking the thin gray hair. The
well-known voice, or perhaps the gentle touch, seemed to rouse him, for
he slowly opened his eyes and seeing Flutters, smiled.
“You'll not try to keep me this time,” he said slowly, looking up
at Flutters beseechingly, but in a voice too low and weak for even
Josephine to hear.
“He said not to try to keep him this time,” Flutters explained, “but
don't you think I ought to go right away for a doctor?”
Bobbin moved his head entreatingly from side to side, so Josephine said:
“Well, perhaps not yet, Flutters, he seems so much more comfortable
now,” whereupon Bobbin looked the thanks he felt. After a while, when he
had once again mustered strength, he said: “Flutters, the little book.”
Flutters, knowing well enough what he meant, took the Prayer-Book which
had been soon restored to Bobbin after that night when he had
first joyfully discovered it, and turning to the selections for the
twenty-fifth day of the month began to read. Josephine drew a chair to
the fireplace and sat listening, with her hands folded in her lap, while
Bobbin never took his eyes from Flutters's face, as he sat close beside
him so that he might hear distinctly.
The little hut looked very cheery and cosey, converted as it had been
into such a comfortable shelter, more comfortable indeed than Bobbin had
ever known, and at a time, too, when a warm room and a quiet one meant
more to him than it could have meant at anytime in all his life before.
But the light in the room was momentarily growing more and more dim, and
Flutters had to hold the book high in his hand toward the little window
in order to see at all. Gradually Bobbin's tired eyes closed, and the
last words that fell on his ears were these: “My soul has longed for
Thy salvation and I have a good hope because of Thy Word. Mine eyes
long sore for Thy Word, saying, Oh, when wilt Thou comfort me?” Flutters
finished the selection and looked up. “Miss Josephine!” was all he
found words to say, but both of them knew in a moment that in very
truth “Evacuation Day” had come for Bobbin too, evacuation from all the
sorrows of a long, hard life.
“I am not sorry,” said Josephine, looking down on the calm face from
which all the care seemed at once to have vanished.
“Nor I,” said Flutters, “but he was such a good friend to me when no one
else cared,” and then, unable to keep the tears back, he laid his arm on
Bobbin's bed, and burying his face upon it, cried bitterly.
There was something sacred about this deep sense of personal loss that
was finding vent in Flutters's hot tears, and for a while Josephine
hesitated to intrude upon it. She moved quietly about the room setting
its few little articles to rights, and then when there was nothing else
to be done, and Flutters had gotten himself somewhat in hand, she sat
down by his side.
“What do you know about Bobbin's history, Flutters?” she asked.
“Not much,” trying to master the emotion that made it difficult to speak;
“he never liked to talk about himself, but he told me once he had
always been sort of alone ever since he could remember, and that he
hadn't a relative in the world.”
Two days afterward, Bobbin was laid away in a corner of the little
cemetery surrounding St. George's Church, Mr. Marberry having gained the
consent of the Vestry to have him buried there. Mr. Marberry read the
service from Flutters's own Prayer-Book, and about the grave of the old
man whose life had been so lonely, gathered at the last a little company
of loving friends. It seemed to Flutters as if, with Bobbin's death,
the chapter of his life that had to do with the wretched circus had been
forever closed, but, oh, how thankful he was to have been able to make
so calm and peaceful the last days of the only friend it had ever given
him. Once again the road-side cottage was dismantled of everything
that made it homelike, and as the bleak wintry winds whistled round and
through it, who would have thought that such a little while ago an old
man had been comfortably housed there, and that it was only now left
tenantless, because its occupant no longer had need of any earthly
shelter.