Of course an hour’s conversation in this mood, decided the question. The next day Mary went to Rutherford Park and took a cottage, and Lilly in high spirits spent the day in packing. “You see, Mamma,” she said, as she triumphantly turned the key in an overflowing trunk, “you see, we ought to have made a change before this. When things begin to go wrong, that is the time to make a change. Sam Houston said that, and I reckon he knew all about things going wrong and changes.” Then after another tug with the straps she looked up, her face aglow and asked,
“Things don’t stay wrong, do they? It is good and bad with them, always good and bad, and good again. You know that, don’t you, Mamma?”
I smiled and answered promptly as she wished, for indeed no one knew better than I did, that
“The Sea of Fortune doth not ever flow,
She draws her favors to the lowest ebb,
Her tides have equal times to come and go,
Her loom doth weave the finest and the coarsest web.
No joy so great, but runneth to an end,
No hap so hard, but will in time amend.”
The ready acceptance of a simpler life by Mary and Lilly greatly relieved me for the fear that it would be a trial to them to leave New York had been the pinch of the trouble. Alice was happy anywhere if we were with her, for her life and conversation was not of this world. Born in the stress and terror of the war time, when I lived and moved only in the mercy and care of God, she came into this world more psychically than physically developed. She has never yet comprehended the meaning of care or want. God is her Father, therefore she can “lack nothing.” Her wants are few and simple, and she asks God for them, and I would sell the wedding 347 ring from my finger, rather than she should fear God had failed her. If she notices that I am anxious, and I say, “I am a little troubled,” she asks if I have “told God about the trouble?” and when I answer, “Yes, darling, I have told Him all about it,” she adds with a confident air, “Then it is all right. God will make it so.”