"Sonny," she said, "we will do the will of God."
"Did He do this to me?" the boy asked inflexibly.
She looked at the mountain beyond the lake, whence, she knew, her strength came hourly.
"The world is His," she said. "He does everything. We can't find out why. We must help Him. We must ask Him to help us do His will."
Then they sat down to dinner, and the boy, strengthening his own savage will, forced himself to eat.
He did not think so much about the ways of God as shrewdly, when he grew older, of toughening muscles and hardening flesh. Peter's talents, Peter's triumphs, became a kind of possession with him. Osmond had perhaps his first taste of happiness when Peter went abroad, and Osmond knew who had sent him and who, if the market-garden throve, had sworn to keep him there. The allowance he provided Peter thereafter gave him as much pleasure in the making as it did the boy in the using of it. Peter was like one running an easy race, not climbing the difficult steps that lead to greatness. It looked, at times, as if it were the richness of his gift that made his work seem play,—not Osmond's fostering. But now, coming home to more triumphs, Peter seemed to have forgotten the goal.
He found Osmond one morning resting under the apple tree, his chosen shade. Peter strode up to the spot moodily, angrily even, his picturesque youth well set off by the ease of his clothes. Osmond watched him coming and approved of him without condition, because he saw in him so many kinds of mastery. Peter gave him a nod, and threw himself and his hat on the grass, at wide interval. He quoted some Latin to the effect that Osmond was enjoying the ease of his dignified state.
"I've been up and at it since light," said Osmond, smiling at him. "You don't know when sun-up is."
Peter rolled over and studied the grass.
"Are you coming up to see Rose?" he asked presently.