"Don't care!" said Mrs. Jeffords, triumphantly. "There's the kitchen bedroom, that I keep apurpose to camp down in. It's all right. Don't you worry."
"You never care; that's the reason I do worry," said Sylvie.
"I've learnt not to care," said Mrs. Jeffords. "'Tain't no use. You must take things as they are. They will be so, and you can't help it. If they fall right side up, well and good; if they're wrong side up, let 'em lay. And they ain't wrong side up yet, I can tell you. You just go and sit down and enjoy yourselves."
Mrs. Argenter was brighter this evening than she had been for a long while. "It was nice to be among people again," she said, when the evening was over.
"So it is," said Sylvie. "But somehow I didn't feel the difference the other way. I think I always am among people. At least it never seems to me as if they were very far off. Next door mayn't be exactly alongside, but it is next door for all that, and it is in the world. And the world wakes up all together every morning,—that is, as fast as the morning gets round."
With her "mayn't be's" and her "is'es," Sylvie was unconsciously making a habit of the trick of Susan Nipper, but with a kindlier touch to her antitheses than pertained to those of that acerb damsel.
Mrs. Argenter wanted tangible presences. She had not reached so far as her child into that inner living where all feel each other, knowing that "these same tribulations"—and joys also—are accomplished among the brotherhood that is in all the earth; knowing, too,—ah! that is the blessedness when we come to it,—that we may walk, already, in the heavenly places with all them that are alive unto each other in the Lord.
The next morning after deep rains in a hill-country is a morning of wonders; if you can go out among them, and know where to find them. Down the ravines, from the far back, greater heights, rush and plunge the streams whitened with ecstasy, turned to sweet wild harmonies as they go. It is a day of glory for the water-drops that are born to make a part of it.
Sylvie knew the way down through the glen, from fall to fall, half a mile apart. She and Bob Jeffords had come down to them, time and again; after nearly every little summer shower; for with all the heat, the night rains had been plentiful and frequent, and the water-courses had been kept full. The brick-fields, that looked so near from the farms, were really more than two miles away; and it was a constant descent, from brow to brow, over the range of uplands between the Jeffords' place and the Basin.
"The First Cataracts are in here," said Sylvie, gleefully, leading the way in by a bar-place upon a very wet path, the wetness of which nobody minded, all having come defended with rubbers and waterproofs, and tucked up their petticoats boot-high. Great bosks of ferns grew beside, and here and there a bush burning with autumn color. Everything shone and dripped; the very stones glittered.