I wonder if any words ever do really "fall to the ground." There's a deal of power for good or evil in a word. And there's no measuring the effect of any word. Like a stone thrown into a pond, it sends circle after circle outward, even when it has disappeared itself, and the water over it is smooth.
Once speak a word, and you can't stop circles. They'll go on and on, till they're done. That's the meaning of "least said, soonest mended." And it's true even of good advice, as well as of other sorts of talk. Piling on words don't do good in the end.
I thought a lot of what Mary had said; but I always came round to the same point. I didn't want to be freed from my promise.
It was curious how many things happened together that year. Sometimes it does seem so in life; ever so many uncommon events near after one another, and then a long spell with nothing particular.
There was Rupert's asking me to marry him; and the narrow escape of a bad collision; and the Earl giving me his watch; and my silly little head being turned. Then there was Mary Russell's illness; and her brother always about; till my silly little heart was turned too. And then Mr. Russell bidding good-bye, and Rupert running away.
It didn't seem likely anything more would happen out of the common yet awhile. But one never can tell. That's the strangest part of life. However steady the days seem to go on, one never can be sure of a single day ahead.
No, I don't know either that that is the strangest. There's something stranger yet in the way we manage to go slipping and sliding along, never able to see if a precipice don't lie just ahead, and yet not troubling ourselves, but expecting things to keep on always the same. At least, that's how it is with some people. Some are over-anxious, and some don't think enough. It's right to trust God for our future; but it isn't right to be reckless and indifferent.
Something lay ahead that summer, which mother and I little dreamed of. If we had—but, after all, isn't it a mercy that we don't see what's coming? Only I do think we should be wiser to live more as if things might come, so that we shouldn't need to be saying afterward with a heart-ache— "Ah! if only I'd guessed, how different I'd have behaved to him or her!"
But I've got more to tell first, before coming to that sorrow.
About a month after the evening when Mr. Russell and I said good-bye to one another in the lane, Mary Russell left us. She was ever so much better by that time, and Mr. Baitson was quite willing she should travel. He'd have given leave a week sooner, I believe, only mother wouldn't let Mary go.