When she found that they were growing awkwardly quiet, she said,—"I suppose the right thing is to remember that there is neither virtue nor blame in just saving or not saving."
"My father lost a good deal by the fire," said Rodney. "More than he thought, at first. He is coming home sooner, in consequence. I'm very glad I did not go abroad. I should have been just whirled out of everything, if I had. As it is, I'm in a place; I've got a lever planted. It's no time now for a fellow to look round for a foothold."
"You like Arlesbury?" asked Sylvie. "I think it must be a lovely place."
"Why?" said Rodney, taken by surprise.
"From the piece of it you sent me in the winter."
"Oh! those ferns? I'm glad you liked them. There's something nice and plucky about those little things, isn't there?"
It was every word he could think of to reply. He had a provoked perception that was not altogether nice and plucky, of himself, just then. But that was because the snow was still unlifted from him. He was under a burden of coldness and constraint. Somebody ought to come and take it away. It was time. The spring, that would not be kept back, was here.
He had not said a word to Sylvie about her mother. How could he speak of what had left her alone in the world, and not say that he wanted to make a new world for her? That he had longed for it through all her troubles, and that this, and nothing else, was what he was keeping his probation for?
So they came to Tillington at last, and there had been between them only little drifting talk of the moment, that told nothing.
After all, do we not, for a great part, drift through life so, giving each other crumbs off the loaf that will only seem to break in that paltry way? And by and by, when the journey is over, do we not wonder that we could not have given better and more at a time? Yet the crumbs have the leaven and the sweetness of the loaf in them; the commonest little wayside things are charged full of whatever is really within us. God's own love is broken small for us. "This is my Body, broken for you."