Hilda | Page 2

"I wear three garments only--the garments of my sisters who plant
the young shoots in the rice-fields, and carry bricks for the building of
rich men's houses, and gather the dung of the roadways to burn for fuel.
If the Army is to conquer India it must march bare-footed and
bare-headed all the way. All the way," Laura repeated, with a tremor of
musical sadness. Her eyes were fixed in soft appeal upon the other
woman's.
"And if the sun beats down upon my uncovered head, I think, 'it struck
more fiercely upon Calvary'; and if the way is sharp to my unshod feet,
I say, 'At least I have no cross to bear.'" The last words seemed almost a
chant, and her voice glided from them into singing----
"The blessed Saviour died for me, On the cross! On the cross! He bore
my sins at Calvary, On the rugged cross!"
She sang softly, her body thrust a little forward in a tender swaying--
"Behold His hands and feet and side, The crown of thorns, the crimson
tide. 'Forgive them, Father!' loud he cried, On the rugged cross!"
"Oh, thank you!" Miss Howe exclaimed. Then she murmured again,
"That's just what I mean."
A blankness came over the girl's face as a light cloud will cross the
moon. She regarded Hilda from behind it with penetrant anxiety. "Did
you really enjoy that hymn?" she asked.
"Indeed I did."
"Then, dear Miss Howe, I think you cannot be very far from the
kingdom."

"I? Oh, I have my part in a kingdom." Her voice caressed the idea.
"And the curious thing is that we are all aristocrats who belong to it.
Not the vulgar kind, you understand--but no, you don't understand.
You'll have to take my word for it." Miss Howe's eyes sought a red
hibiscus flower that looked in at the window half drowned in sunlight,
and the smile in them deepened. The flower admitted so naïvely that it
had no business to be there.
"Is it the Kingdom of God and His righteousness?" Laura Filbert's clear
glance was disturbed by a ray of curiosity, but the inflexible quality of
her tone more than counterbalanced this.
"There's nothing about it in the Bible, if that's what you mean. And yet
I think the men who wrote 'The time of the singing of birds has come,'
and 'I will lift mine eyes unto the hills,' must have belonged to it." She
paused, with an odd look of discomfiture. "But one shouldn't talk about
things like that--it takes the bloom off. Don't you feel that way about
your privileges now and then? Don't they look rather dusty and battered
to you after a day's exposure in Bow Bazaar?"
There came a light crunch of wheels on the red kunker drive outside
and a switch past the bunch of sword ferns that grew beside the door.
The muffled crescendo of steps on the stair and the sound of an inquiry
penetrated from beyond the portière, and without further preliminary
Duff Lindsay came into the room.
"Do I interrupt a rehearsal?" he asked; but there was nothing in the way
he walked across the room to Hilda Howe to suggest that the idea
abashed him. For her part, she rose and made one short step to meet
him, and then received him, as it were, with both hands and all her
heart.
"How ridiculous you are!" she cried. "Of course not. And let me tell
you it is very nice of you to come this very first day, when one was
dying to be welcomed. Miss Filbert came too, and we have been talking
about our respective walks in life. Let me introduce you. Miss
Filbert--Captain Filbert, of the Salvation Army--Mr. Duff Lindsay of
Calcutta."

She watched with interest the gravity with which they bowed, and
differentiated it; his the simple formality of his class, Laura's a
repressed hostility to such an epitome of the world as he looked,
although any Bond street tailor would have impeached his waistcoat,
and one shabby glove had manifestly never been on. Yet Miss Filbert's
first words seemed to show a slight unbending. "Won't you sit there?"
she said, indicating the sofa corner she had been occupying. "You get
the glare from the window where you are." It was virtually a command,
delivered with a complete air of dignity and authority; and Lindsay, in
some confusion, found himself obeying. "Oh, thank you, thank you," he
said. "One doesn't really mind in the least. Do you--do you object to it?
Shall I close the shutters?"
"If you do," said Miss Howe delightedly, "we shall not be able to see."
"Neither we should," he assented; "the others are closed already. Very
badly built, these Calcutta houses, aren't they? Have you been long