Boaz

But before he could walk, another little one came who was to grow up to be very heart’s joy. Music, as we see him now, is a child so sensitive, so pure of spirit, that the verse about the children’s angels comes constantly to mind. But his life, like his little brother’s, had its early troubles. His mother was very ill, and lay in weakness and in loneliness so profound that Kinglet, then barely five years old, and her husband, who, though so futile, was not an unkind man, and who just then was at home with her, were her only nurses, her only help.

When her baby was ten days old she called her husband. He had not noticed how day by day the little store of grain grew less. He walked in a sleepy dream. But for Mimosa no such dreams might be, she knew to an ounce how much rice there was. She had counted on being able to work by now. But the will that had carried her through so much was helpless before this onslaught of great weakness.

‘“‘T cannot go to the fields,’’ she said, “‘ but will you not go to the town by the sea’’ — and she named it — ‘‘and tell my youngest brother how

things are? Tell him I am weak, but will return anything he may send. Ask him for the loan of two rupees; two only will suffice.’ And she sent him off.

This younger brother had been well educated, as the elder brother, of whom we shall hear later, had been. And once, during the long holidays when he was ill here, we had nursed him day and night. He, like his elder brother, had been baptized; but, like him, though continuing a Christian in name, he had long ago turned back to the husks.

Mimosa knew this. “He has never spoken to me of that which he once believed, but surely he cannot have forgotten all? Surely he will be kind?” she thought. He had got well-paid work as a result of the education given by Christians’ money. Would he grudge two rupees of it to help her? She would return it; he knew she would return it.

But after her husband had gone she lay and thought of it. She had never before asked anyone for anything. She felt doubtful. Had she made a mistake?

There was a side room at one end of the house. It had no windows, only a door opening off the inner verandah. She kept her stores of grain there, when there were stores to keep. She used the room for prayer, for it was quiet, remote from the noise of the street.

When I heard this story, the passing of the years had softened its outlines; but when I asked Mimosa what else was in the room, her eyes filled with the sweetest smile.

“Why, nothing,” she said, “nothing but quite empty earthen vessels. Nothing else at all was in that room that day.”

She rose slowly from her mat and, leaning on the wall for support, went to the room, taking her baby with her and calling to the other two little boys to come. They left their play and followed her in. Then she partly shut the door — not quite, lest the darkness should trouble the children — and with her arms round them she told her Father just what she had done, how she had never done so before, how she would understand if it could not be as she had asked, how she would know then that He had some other way to come to her relief. “And it will be well, Father; however You do, it will be well.”

Her husband returned. A walk to and fro of thirty miles had been for nothing, for he had not brought back any money. “No,” the younger brother had said, forgetting the kind ways of his land, “she is weak. How can I know she will ever be strong enough to work and return it?”

Then Mimosa took her little three into that dim room again. The larger empty pots stood on the floor, the smaller ones were heaped in a corner. “Father, it is well,” she said. “All that You do is well.”

But the children’s food? She paused for a minute, then in their hearing said: “O Father, it cannot be that Your little ones are to be hungry, and yet it appears to be so. I do not understand it, but it is well.” And she led them out of the empty room and shut the door.

Now, among her relatives was one, only a distant relative, but so connected that for her to work in his fields was as if Ruth worked in the cornfields of Boaz; and he was a kind and a just man. He had observed Mimosa; he knew that, wherever she was, the work was done faithfully, and there was no need to overlook it. He came now to inquire when he might hope to have her back again.

She told him that she could not say when she could return, for she could not regain her strength.

“Then send thy husband,” was his not unnatural rejoinder; and he would have gone, but, noticing her thin, tired face, he drew the truth from her.

“This cannot be! I will not let it be!” he exclaimed. And he sent at once a supply for six days, enough to stir up the poor, slack husband to turn his hand to some honest work, so that the loan was soon returned, enough to cheer the soul of the wife, who saw in it the loving hand of her God. Once more she and her children went into the dark little room, now furnished with grain, and to her grateful faith it was an illuminated place.