No one of all her friends knew how to deal with Martha--so that her impatient soul knew no discipline except the inevitable restraints of poverty, and these, if they humble the pride, are but spurs to the eager fancy, burning to escape from their power. Through all the years of romance the wish and hope to do somewhat, had filled Martha’s mind with visions; but then came those slow, gradual, steady years, wherein the light of common day began to blot out the radiant mists of the morning, and as her hopes fell one by one, and one by one the months lengthened, filled with the tedious labour which gave such scope for thought, bitterness came in like deep waters into the fierce heart, which rendered all its strength to that might of disappointment, and wrestled with itself like a caged eagle. To find that after aspiring to do all, one can do nothing--that soaring in fancy into the broad firmament, in the body one must condescend to all the meanest and smallest cares of daily life--to dream of unknown heights to be attained, and to find instead that by the slow toil of every long uninteresting day one must labour for daily bread--it is not wonderful that the awaking was bitter; and all the more, because in both the dream and the awaking she was uncomprehended and alone. They all lay dead these hopes of her strange solitary youth--but as they died others rose. This boy, in whom the young beautiful life rose with a grace which she knew it never had in herself--what might he not do? and so she set herself to train him. The old lore that is in all hearts, of the brave and of the great, the histories of Scripture, which live for ever; all that God has recorded for us of his servants’ stout lives, and much that men have written in lesser records. The lonely young woman, feeling herself grave and old among her neighbours, poured all her vehement heart into the glowing intelligence of the boy. She began to think it well that those chimeras of her own had fallen like withered leaves to enrich the soil--and in him should be the glorious spring. How was it now? The deep red flush which sometimes burned on Martha’s cheek, the anger which only one of so dear regard could awaken, and sadder still, the utter heaviness with which her heart sank in the rebound, proclaimed the end of her second harvest. The first time she had sowed in proud wilfulness--it was meet she should reap disappointment; but the second seed-time had been in hope more Christianlike, and with strong crying for the sunshine and the dew--the wonderful sunshine and dew of high heaven, which had never fallen upon her seed.