look like the Scripture-picture sort of angels; and they don’t appear to the high-flown, star-gazing sort of people who are always looking for them.”
“Do tell us what you saw, Mrs. Batterby,” besought the emotional Matilda.
“And also what calamity it foretold,” added Mrs. Windybank. “I always believe that supernatural appearances precede some terrible misfortune.”
“Well, my experience, or whatever you call it, happened five-and-thirty years ago, and no calamity has happened to me since. On the contrary, it taught me that no calamity could happen to me as long as I lay safe in my Heavenly Father’s Hand. That’s just the lesson that I learned from it.”
“Do tell us the story,” urged Miss Skipworth.
“I will, Matilda, if you’ll get on with your bed-jacket, and not leave off your sewing whenever anybody speaks, as if your hearing lay in your fingers, and you couldn’t sew and listen at the same time.
“Well, when I was a young woman I lived with an aunt in Merchester who kept a stationer’s shop; and every Sunday I used to walk over to see my mother who lived at a village about three miles off, she being a widow and keeping the post-office there and my two little sisters as well.
“It was one Sunday in September—one of those deceitful sort of days that look like summer, and then take you all of a heap by getting dark before you can say Jack Robinson—and I had been spending the day with my mother as usual; I stayed for the evening service, it being the Sunday-school Anniversary and a special preacher for the occasion; quite a young man, but one of the finest preachers I ever heard. Though it was five-and-thirty years ago, I remember that sermon as if I’d heard it last Sunday.”
“What was it about?” asked Mrs. Windybank. “For my part, I always enjoy funeral-sermons the most; but I’ve heard some very sweet ones in times of war, and on the last Sundays in the Old Year.”
“It was on the very subject that Matilda was speaking about—in fact, it was her conversation that recalled the whole incident to my mind. The text was, ‘Jacob went on his way, and the angels of God met him’; and the preacher said—what I’ve just being saying to you—that the angels of God meet us far oftener than we think; only we are so busy looking out for them to come in our own particular way that we don’t recognise them. Unless they are in their flowing robes with their harps and halos and fiery swords, we don’t know that they are
