Nora's thoughts went back with a bound to poor Lizzie Mason, her sad, tired face and shabby dress, and wondered if such thoughts and fancies ever flitted vaguely through her brain on a holiday. But the little girl is dreaming now of what or whom she shall please to be to-day:
"To-morrow I must be Pippa who winds silk,
The whole year round, to earn just bread and milk:
But, this one day, I have leave to go,
And to play out my fancy's fullest games."
Ah, poor Lizzie! far too heavily weighed down by serious and pressing cares, to have any wish to "play out fancy's games!" She glanced at Mrs. Pomeroy, who sat with clasped hands and attitude all attent, and at Miss Pomeroy, reclining with her cheek resting on her hand and an unusually softened expression in the lines of the somewhat hard face. She wondered if it occurred to them, how many real dramas might be going on about them, as worthy of their sympathy as this one, idealized by the power of the poet. She began to think how it would be, if she were, there and then, to go to Mr. Pomeroy with a petition to restore to his toiling maidens their full measure of wages. Strange that people should feel so much more for a girl in a book, than for the real flesh-and-blood ones, in daily life! But Mr. Pomeroy had apparently gone to sleep, and his son was whispering to Kitty, instead of listening. Ah, what was that? Was not this Kitty—to the life!
"For are not such
Used to be tended, flower-like, every feature,
As if one's breath would fray the lily of a creature?
A soft and easy life these ladies lead:
Whiteness in us were wonderful indeed."
Was that how their protected happy life looked to those who saw them de bas en haut? Was it any wonder that girls like Nelly were pert and discontented? With such thoughts drifting through her mind, she listened, swayed by the magic power of poetry over the souls that are open to its charm, to Pippa's pathetic yearning for the love which, after all, is the blessing of blessings—the warm, cherishing love of the brooding bird, the love of the mother for the child, ending in the cry,
"If I only knew
What was my mother's face—my father's, too!"
But what are these lines that follow? Nora listens with caught breath to the passage which closes the reading, given in Mr. Chillingworth's most impressive manner.
"Nay, if you come to that, best love of all
Is God's; then why not have God's love befall
Myself as, in the palace by the Dome,
Monsignor?—who to-night will bless the home
Of his dead brother; and God bless in turn
That heart which beats, those eyes which mildly burn
With love for all men! I, to-night at least,
Would be that holy and beloved priest.
"Now wait!—even I already seem to share
In God's love; what does New-year's hymn declare?
What other meaning do these verses bear?
"All service ranks the same with God:
If now, as formerly he trod
Paradise, his presence fills
Our earth, each only as God wills
Can work—God's puppets, best and worst,
Are we; there is no last nor first.