The birds began to sing and the trees were coming out again. We went to the woods for wild flowers and had our house fragrant with them. But in the wake of spring came house-cleaning and gardening, and then—all the sewing.
“The same thing year after year;” I said to mamma.
“And yet not quite the same either. There is a gradual outgrowing and ingrowing. There should be a corresponding strength and sweetness and patience and faith. By and by we come to the whole stature. But it is the growth of a good many springs, the heat and toil and watching of many summers, and the ripening of repeated autumns.”
“I did not take it as high as that.”
“But are we not to?” and mamma’s face was at its sweetest. “I often think we work, in types. We clean our houses and dust finds lodgement in them again, we purify our souls by prayer and good works, and we find the rubbish of indolence and impatience and selfishness. So we go at it and have another trial.”
“We ought to get strong;” I said thoughtfully.
“We do grow stronger, I hope. And we become more watchful over our work. You know when our house is first made nice and tidy how careful we are of littering it again. And when God has helped us by his grace to purify our souls how earnestly we should try to keep them so. For they are His temples.”
I thought it over by myself. Yes, everything spoke. The true meanings of life were not so hard to get at, after all. It was—believe and do. They went hand in hand.
And yet it was a curious jumble. You had to come back from the grand thoughts to the common every-day doings. Dresses and skirts and aprons, sheets and towels, washing and ironing, and the inevitable eating. The charm lay in making it as good and as pretty as possible, with the outside harmony of taste and appropriateness, and the minor graces of love and kindness.
Fan had taken upon herself some new, odd ways. She began to grow very motherly with the children, she spent a part of every day in the kitchen with Ann, and she had a box in one corner of the bureau-drawer with which she held mysterious consultations. Wonderful were the patterns of tatting that went into it, the bits of fine crocheting, the puffs and rufflings gathered and stitched in dainty fashionings.