Now, the worst had happened, and was over, for
the law had declared that neither Tom Smith nor Emma, his wife had
the slightest claim to her, not being related at all. Nor were they
fit and proper persons to have the charge of any child. And to her
great delight she was handed over to the guardianship of the vicar
and Miss Rose Carew, and to the care of Mrs. Perry, to be trained and
brought up to be an honest, truthful, industrious woman.
Never to the end of her life would Huldah forget that home-coming,
that drive back to Woodend Lane, or those days that followed.
"Was it really only yesterday that I was here, and Dick and I walked
into Belmouth?" she asked, incredulously, as she lay back in the
carriage. "It seems weeks and weeks ago! Oh, how lovely everything
is! It seems as if I didn't notice it enough till now;" and she drew
in long breaths of the fresh cold air, and the mingled scents of wet
earth and pine trees. "I seem to smell vi'lets, but they can't be
out yet, can they, miss?"
Miss Carew laughed. "Lots of things have happened since yesterday,
brownie; but even the brownies could not make the violets spring up
and open in one night."
"But God could," thought Huldah to herself.
After all that happened in the last twenty-four hours, she felt that
nothing was beyond His power, but she was too shy to say so aloud.
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