The tired children were soon at rest, for their time of sleepless
trouble was far distant. Belle's pretty head drooped also with the
roses over the porch as the late twilight deepened. To her and the
little people the day had been rich in novelty, and the country was
a wonderland of many and varied delights. In the eyes of children
the Garden of Eden survives from age to age. Alas! the tendency to
leave it survives also, and to those who remain, regions of beauty
and mystery too often become angular farms and acres.
Mrs. Jocelyn and Mildred still more clearly illustrated the truth
that the same world wears a different aspect as the conditions of
life vary. They were going out into the wilderness. The river was
a shining pathway, whose beauty was a mockery, for it led away from
all that they loved best. The farmhouse was a place of exile, and
its occupants a strange, uncouth people with whom they felt that
they would have nothing in common. Mrs. Jocelyn merely looked forward
to weeks of weary waiting until she could again join her husband,
to whom in his despondency her heart clung with a remorseful
tenderness. She now almost wished that they had lived on bread and
water, and so had provided against this evil day of long separation
and dreary uncertainty. Now that she could no longer rest in her
old belief that there would be "some way" of tiding over every
financial crisis, she became a prey to forebodings equally vague
that there might be no way. That HER HUSBAND could spend day after
day seeking employment, offering, too, to take positions far inferior
to the one he had lost, was a truth that at first bewildered and
then disheartened her beyond measure. She felt that they must,
indeed, have fallen on evil times when his services went a-begging.
To Mildred the present was dark, and the future most unpromising;
but deep in her heart nestled the sustaining thought that she was
not unloved, not forgotten. The will of others, not his own, kept
her lover from her side. His weaknesses were of a nature that
awakened her pity rather than contempt. If he had been a Hercules
physically and a Bacon intellectually, but conceited, domineering,
untruthful, and of the male flirt genus--from such weaknesses she
would have shrunk with intense repugnance. Her friends thought
her peculiarly gentle in disposition. They did not know--and she
herself might rarely recognize the truth--that she was also very
strong; her strength on its human side consisted in a simple,
unswerving fidelity to her womanly nature and sense of right; on
the Divine side, God's word was to her a verity. She daily said "Our
Father" as a little child. Has the world yet discovered a purer or
loftier philosophy?
CHAPTER VI
ROGER DISCOVERS A NEW TYPE
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