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Scarcely had she reached it, however, when the voices of the children came shouting along some corridor, on their way to find their breakfast: she must go and minister, postponing meditation on the large and distant for action in the small and present. But the sight of the exuberance, the foaming overflow of life and gladness in Saffy, and of the quieter, deeper joy of Mark, were an immediate reward. They could hardly be prevented from bolting their breakfast like puppies, in their eagerness to rush into the new creation, the garden of Eden around them. But Hester thought of the river flowing turbid and swift at the foot of the lawn: she must not let them go loose! She told them they must not go without her. Their faces fell, and even Mark began a gentle expostulation.
A conscientious elder sister has to bear a good many hard thoughts from the younger ones on whom, without a parent's authority and reverence, she has to exercise a parent's restraint. Well for her if she come out of the trial without having gathered some needless severity, some seeming hardness, some tendency to peevishness! These weak evils are so apt to gather around a sense at once of the need and of the lack of power!
"No, Mark," she said, "I cannot let you go alone. You are like two kittens, and might be in mischief or danger before you knew. But I won't keep you waiting; I will get my parasol at once."
I will attempt no description of the beauties that met them at every turn. But the joy of those three may well have a word or two. I doubt if some of the children in heaven are always happier than Saffy and Mark were that day. Hester had thoughts which kept her from being so happy as they, but she was more blessed. Glorious as is the child's delight, the child-heart in the grown woman is capable of tenfold the bliss. Saffy pounced on a flower like a wild beast on its prey; she never stood and gazed at one, like Mark. Hester would gaze till the tears came in her eyes;
There are consciousnesses of lack which carry more bliss than any possession.
Mark was in many things an exception—a curious mixture of child and youth. He had never been strong, and had always been thoughtful. When very small he used to have a sacred rite of his own—I would not have called it a rite but that he made a temple for it. Many children like to play at church, but I doubt if that be good: Mark's rite was neither play nor church. He would set two chairs in the recess of a window—"one for Mark and one for God"—then draw the window-curtains around and sit in silence for a space.
When a little child sets a chair for God, does God take the chair or does he not? God is the God of little children, and is at home with them.
For Saffy, she was a thing of smiles and of tears just as they chose to come. She had not a suspicion yet that the exercise of any operative power on herself was possible to her—not to say required of her. Many men and women are in the same condition who have grown cold and hard in it; she was soft and warm, on the way to awake and distinguish and act. Even now when a good thought came she would give it a stranger's welcome; but the first appeal to her senses would drive it out of doors again.
Before their ramble was over, what with the sweet twilight gladness of Mark, the merry noonday brightness of Saffy, and the loveliness all around, the heart of Hester was quiet and hopeful as a still mere that waits in the blue night the rising of the moon. She had some things to trouble her, but none of them had touched the quick of her being. Thoughtful, therefore in a measure troubled, by nature, she did not know what heart-sickness was. Nor would she ever know it as many must, for her heart went up to the heart of her heart, and there unconsciously laid up store against the evil hours that might be on their way to her. And this day her thoughts kept rising to Him whose thought was the meaning of all she saw, the center and citadel of its loveliness.
For if once the suspicion wake that God never meant the things that go to and fro in us as we gaze on the world, that moment is the universe worthless as a doll to a childless mother. If God be not, then steam-engine and flower are in the same category. No; the steam-engine is the better thing, for it has the soul of a man in it, and the flower has no soul at all. It cannot mean if it is not meant. It is God that means everything as we read it, however poor or mingled with mistake our reading may be. And the soothing of his presence in what we call nature, was beginning to work on Hester, helping her toward that quietness of spirit without which the will of God can scarce be perceived.