The summer was passing quickly. During the next weeks more company arrived from the West. This meant a lot of hard work, but these were times of refreshing. Jennie found that she was beginning to feel a happiness within her that replaced the old resentment, a sense of having done something worthwhile for the Lord. She began to see housework as a service for Him, and not as the drudgery she once felt it to be.
Alec continued to be a frequent visitor and more and more like one of the family. Mrs. Benton said one evening at the dinner table that she never realized until now what she missed in not having a son. She was growing fond of Alec and hoped that he would stay in Jaffrey indefinitely. What once seemed like a lost summer, was turning into a full and happy one.
Alec enjoyed bicycle riding as much as his cousins did. He knew how to fix all the broken parts on their bicycles, so often he was busy out in the driveway with his tools, repairing the bikes. Packing a lunch, they would drive down to the lake-shore. They often sat chatting, never seeming to run out of conversation. Alec was always coming up with something surprising.
One pleasant afternoon, the three of them sat down by the lake while they watched the ducks swimming slowly back and forth, tossing them bits of the crumbs from their sandwiches. Alec told them a touching story about his mother. He looked sad as he expressed the overwhelming thoughts of his heart.
"It was a humiliating thing to me, girls," he began. "My mother never complains, you know. She just goes on with the hard work and pressures that come and go in her life. I take her for granted. But one day I opened the upstairs door to the basement and there on the top step sat my mother, silent... but weeping. Do you know what something like that does to a fellow?" He shook his head, still unable to believe that he could have been so calloused to his mother's needs.
"Seeing Mother in distress made me think about another thing in connection with that. It concerns widows." Alec often jumped swiftly from one subject to another, leaving Jennie to catch up with his train of thought. He leaned against the trunk of a tree, looking out over the calm lake, the ducks swimming back and forth past them.
"You know, Kara, we all weep at a graveside, don't we? It seems only proper that we do so there. But then afterward we come back to normal living, back to the gathering where we all put on our smiles. The widow puts on her smile and no one ever knows the crying that goes on at home and in the heart."
He paused as Jennie related how more than once she had seen a widow out West trying to hide her tears in the privacy of one of the back rooms at meeting. Alec looked down and blinked away tears from his own eyes.
Jennie sat pondering the deep thoughts and extraordinary perception Alec seemed to have. Family love was strong within his heart. But he possessed something even deeper. She saw in him a closeness to the Lord almost akin to the trust of a small child in its parent. "We should all have trust like that," she thought to herself.
It was evening and the house was silent. Jennie sat alone in the living room, trying to finish a piece of handwork she was making for a gift. She became restless, thinking of Stephen. She rose from her chair and stood a long while at the window, looking out. She wondered where he was, what he was doing, whether he was safe. She missed him.
Jennie thought of the impact Alec's coming had made on her own heart. How she wished Stephen could be here and become a friend to Alec as well. It had taken someone a little older coming to Jaffrey and taking a strong stand for the truth, to encourage them. Hearing of his experiences, of his simple trust in the Lord, had strengthened both Jennie and Kara's faith. She had never been aware before what a positive influence one person could have upon another.