She stood for just a moment, as if transfixed by astonishment at the
unwonted sight in the room, then turned and sped away as swiftly and
silently as she had come.
"That is Dirk's sister," Sallie Calkins said, coming forward, her homely
face aglow with shame. "She isn't a bad girl, ma'am, she doesn't mean to
be, but she has a dreadful time. Her mother is sickly, and has to go out
washing, times when she isn't able to sit up; and there'll be days when
she can't hold up her head; and the father is bad, ma'am, and drinks,
and swears, and sells things for drink till there ain't nothing left to
sell; and Mart hasn't anything to mend her clothes with, and she doesn't
know how, anyway; and she hasn't even got a comb to comb her hair
with, her father he took it to sell; and everything there is horrid, and
Dirk, he's awful."
It was strange, she could not herself account for it; but with every
added word of misery that set poor Dirk Colson lower and lower in the
scale of humanity, there seemed to come into this woman's heart, and
shine in her face, an assurance that he was to be a "chosen vessel unto
God."
The doctor was watching her again, curious, apparently, to see how this
pitiful appeal for forbearance in judging of poor Mart affected her, and
something in his face made her say, speaking low, "an inheritance among
them which are sanctified.
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