In Him we live, He is our Source, our Spring,
And we, His fashioning,
We have no sight except by His foreseeing,
In Him we live and move and have our being,
He spake the Word, and lo! Creation stood,
And God said, It is good.
David came no more. The dream was done. During the summer days there
rang continually in Elizabeth’s ears the words of a song—one of
Christina’s wonderful songs that sing themselves with no other music at
all.
The hope I dreamed of was a dream,
Was but a dream, and now I wake
Exceeding comfortless, and worn, and old,
For a dream’s sake.
“Exceeding comfortless.” Yes, there were hours when that was true. She
had taken her heart and broken it for Truth’s sake, and the broken thing
cried aloud of its hurt. Only by much striving could she still it and
find peace.
The glamour of the June days was gone too. July was a wet and stormy
month, and Elizabeth was thankful for the rain and the cold, at which
all the world was grumbling.
Mary came in one July day with a face that matched the weather.
“Why, Molly,” said Elizabeth, kissing her, “what’s the matter, child?”
Mary might have asked the same question, but she was a great deal too
much taken up with her own affairs.
“Edward and I have quarrelled,” she said with a sob in the words, and
sitting down, she burst into uncontrollable tears.
“But what is it all about?” asked Elizabeth, with her arm around her
sister. “Molly, do hush. It is so bad for you. What has Edward done?”
“Men are brutes,” declared Mary.
“Now, I’m sure Edward isn’t,” returned Elizabeth, with real conviction.
Mary sat up.
“He is,” she declared. “No, Liz, just listen. It was all over baby’s
name.”
“What, already?”
“Well, of course, one plans things. If one doesn’t, well, there was
Dorothy Jackson—don’t you remember? She was very ill, and the baby had
to be christened in a hurry, because they didn’t think it was going to
live. And nobody thought the name mattered, so the clergyman just gave
it the first name that came into his head, and the baby didn’t die after
all, and when Dorothy found she’d got to go through life with a daughter
called Harriet, she very nearly died all over again. So, you see, one
has to think of things. So I had thought of a whole lot of names, and
last night I said to Edward, ‘What shall we call it?’ and he looked
awfully pleased and said, ‘What do you think?’ And I said, ‘What would
you like best?’ And he said, ‘I’d like it to be called after you, Mary,
darling. I got Jack Webster’s answer to-day, and he says I may call it
anything I like.’ Well, of _course_, I didn’t see what it had to do with
Jack Webster, but I thought Edward must have asked him to be godfather.
I was rather put out. I didn’t think it quite _nice_, beforehand, you
know.”
The bright colour of indignation had come into Mary’s cheeks, and she
spoke with great energy.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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