Suzanna thought a great deal about the Eagle Man. She was extremely
puzzled as to the exact place he filled in the world. While she admired
him, indeed was strongly drawn to him, still she considered him in some
ways quite inferior to her father. And so she wondered why he could live
in a big house, could have servants who sprang at a word to do his
bidding, and could eat all the fruit he wanted as evidenced by the great
bunch of purple grapes, one of many bunches, while her father lived in a
very small house, had no servants, and had little fruit to eat. She knew
instinctively that the Eagle Man had no need to worry about rent day,
and the many other similar things she felt harassed her father, and over
and over again she pondered on this seemingly unjust state of affairs.
It would have been so much better, she thought, if the Eagle Man
occupied with his one daughter just a little cottage while the large
Procter family had the bigger house. Though she dearly loved the little
home, there had been times when it seemed very small for the growing
Procter family.
But she concluded at last that for the present there were many
perplexities which must remain perplexities till that wonderful time
when she would be a woman, and everything made clear to her.
Experiences, too, had shown her that a troublesome question of Monday
often had resolved itself by Wednesday. So she went contentedly on her
way.
On a morning following Suzanna's talk with the Eagle Man, Mrs. Procter
and all the children except the baby who was taking his early morning
nap upstairs, were in the kitchen busy at their tasks, Suzanna polishing
the stove, and Maizie peeling the potatoes for supper, a task Mrs.
Procter insisted upon being performed early in the day. Peter, exempted,
because of his sex, from household duties--and very unfair this
exemption Suzanna thought privately--was trying his awkward best to mend
a baseball. Maizie broke a rather long silence.
"Mother!" she cried, and then waited.
Mrs. Procter looked up from her kneading.
"What is it, Maizie?" she asked.
"Didn't Jesus ever laugh?" asked Maizie.
No one spoke. Maizie, engaged in peeling a large potato, went on quite
unconscious of the variant expressions pictured in the faces of her
audience: "He's always so sad in our Sunday School lessons, mother. Even
when He said, 'Suffer little children to come unto me,' He didn't
smile--or they never say so when they read the chapter," she finished.
Mrs. Procter looked helplessly at Suzanna. And Suzanna rose to the
occasion. "Maizie," she said, "you know Jesus was born in a manger so
His mother didn't have much money and it was hard to make both ends
meet. And, besides, there wasn't anything to smile about in those days
when the world was so fresh."
"I guess that's right," Mrs. Procter agreed. "What with going round and
trying to persuade people to be good and understand what He was trying
to tell them, there couldn't have been much excuse for smiling."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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