“I knew that it would be so! it always happens thus! If one expects a little pleasure, disappointment is sure to come!”
“How strange and unkind in my uncle!” said Lucy, still half crying; “and to think that these stupid shillings could make up for the loss of such a delightful treat!”
“We had better walk faster,” observed her prudent sister; “your blue bit of sky is quite disappearing now.”
“And these thorns are very annoying,” Lucy added, fretfully, as, trying too hastily to free herself from a bramble, she tore a large hole in her dress.
“Life seems all full of clouds and of thorns,” observed Priscilla, in the tone of one who is conscious of uttering a very wise saying; “and to hope to find it anything else is folly only fit for a very little child. There!—was not that a drop of rain? Yes; another and another, and so large! That great cloud is going to burst just over our heads, and, as always happens, them is no place near where we could take shelter from a storm.”
“Oh, you are wrong there for once! there is Bertha Fielding’s cottage; it is a little, a very little out of our way, and I am sure that the good woman will make us welcome.”
Thither ran the two little girls in the rain, which was now falling thick and fast. A sudden flash of lightning quickened their steps, till, heated and breathless, they slackened their pace as they approached the neat little cot. There was the voice of a woman singing within—a feeble, trembling voice, in which little melody was left; but its tones sounded earnest, as if coming from the heart, and from a heart that was cheerful and happy,—
“Content with this, I ask no more,
But to Thy care the rest resign;
Sick or in health, or rich or poor,