"Love is a sea for which no compass has been invented."
There are times which mark epochs in life; they cut it sharply asunder—the continuity of life is broken.
There was a sense of relief when the two divines were comfortably beyond the horizon of the Little House the next morning, and Mrs. Caird could begin her preparations for their own removal. "I was fain to come to this place, Marion," she said, "and mightily set up with it when I got here. But I have had lots of care in its pretty rooms and among its flowers. So I am just as fain to go back to the big, dull rooms in Bath Street. Paradise is fairly lost, dear. We may dream of it, but we never find it."
"O Aunt Jessy, some surely find it."
"They may think they do for awhile, but indeed,
'There's none exempt from worldly cares,
And few from some domestic cross;
All whiles are in, and whiles are out,
For grief and joy come time about.'"
She was tearing up some old cotton for dusters as she repeated the rhyme, and she emphasized "some domestic cross" by a rent of rather angry vigor; then she added, "Go to your father's study, you will be out of the way of the cleaners there, and I have no doubt whatever that you have an important letter to write."
"Aunt, when did you hear from Donald?"
"It is so long since, I have forgotten."
"Where were they then?"