All mothers certainly do not possess it. On some, on the contrary, the motherly love which passionately enfolds those within is too like a bristling fortification of jealousy and exclusiveness to those without. Or rather (that I dishonour not the most sacred thing in our nature), I should say, the mother's love which is from above is lowered and narrowed into a passion by the selfishness which is not from above. And some unmarried women possess it, some little maidens even who from infancy draw the little ones to them by a soft irresistible attraction, and seem to fold them under soft dove-like plumage. Without something of it women are not women, but only weaker, and shriller, and smaller men. But where, as in Lady Lucy, the whole being is steeped in it, it seems to me the sweetest, strongest, most irresistible power on earth, to control, and bless, and purify, and raise, and the truest incarnation (I cannot say anything so cold as image), the truest embodying and ensouling of what is divine. But that night it so chanced that I, who had fallen asleep lapped in sweet memories of Lady Lucy and in the protection of Aunt Gretel's presence, awakened by the long roll of a thunder-peal which seemed as if it never would end. For some time I tried to hide myself from the flash and the terrific sound under the bed-clothes. But it would not do. At length I sprang speechless from my little bed to Aunt Gretel's. She took me in close to her. And there, with my head on her shoulder, speech came back to me, and I said, in a frightened whisper (for it seemed to me like speaking in church),-- "Aunt Gretel, will the last trumpet be like that?" "I do not know, Olive," said she quietly. "More awful, I think, yet plainer, for we shall all understand it, even those in the graves; and it will call us home." "O Aunt Gretel," I said at last, "can it have anything to do with the May-pole?" "What, sweet heart! the thunder?" "It is God's voice, is it not? Does not the Bible say so? And it does sound like an angry voice," I whispered, for the windows were rattling and the house was quivering with the repeated peals, as if in the grasp of a terrible giant. "There is much indeed to make the good God angry, my lamb, much more than May-poles." "Yes," said I, "there were the three gentlemen in the pillory! That must have been worse certainly. But do you think God can be angry with me, Aunt Gretel?" "For what, sweet heart?" "For loving Lady Lucy," said I; "she is so very sweet." "God is never angry with any one for loving," said Aunt Gretel, "only for not loving. But there is a better voice of God than the thunder, Olive," added she. "A voice that does not roar but speaks, sweet heart. Hast thou never heard that?" I was silent, for I half guessed what she meant.