“I think theirs will be the radiant habitations, and the swift obedience of the seraphim. They will know and love and work, as do the angels.”
“In middle life,” said Elizabeth, “heaven seems farther away from us.”
“True, my sister. At midday the workman may think of the evening, but it is his work that chiefly I engrosses him. Not that the Christian ever forgets God in his labor, but he needs to be on the alert, and to keep every faculty busy. But when the shades of evening gather, he begins to think of going home, and of the result of his labor.”
“In middle life, too, death amazes us. In the moment of hearing of such a death I always found my heart protest against it. But as I grow older I can feel that all the cords binding to life grow slack. How will it be at the end?”
“I think as soon as heaven is seen, we shall tend toward it. We will not go away in sadness, dear sister; we shall depart in the joy of his salvation. If I was by your side, I should not say, “Farewell;” I should speak of our meeting again.”
Then he went away, and Elizabeth, with a happy face, drew her chair to the open window of her room and lifted her work. It was a piece of silken patch-work, made of dresses and scarfs and sashes, that each had a history in her memory. There were circles from Phyllis’s and her own wedding dresses, one from a baby sash of her son Charles. Charles hung his sword from a captain’s belt then, but she kept the blue ribbon of his babyhood. There was a bit from Jack’s first cravat, and Dick’s flag, and her dear husband’s wedding vest, and from the small silken shoes of the little Maya—dear little Maya, who
“From the nursery door,
Climbed up with clay cold feet
Unto the golden floor.”
Any wife and mother can imagine the thousand silken strips that would gather in a life of love.
She had often said that in her old age she would sew together these memorials of her sorrow and her joy; and Bessie frequently stood beside her, listening to events which this or that piece called forth, and watching, the gay beautiful squares, as they grew in the summer sunshine and by the glinting winter firelight.
After Mr. North left her she lifted her work and sat sewing and singing. It was an unusually hot day; the perfume from the August lilies and the lavender and the rich carnations almost made the heart faint. All the birds were still; but the bees were busy, and far off there was the soft tinkling of the water falling into the two fountains on the terrace. Harry came in, and said, “I am going into Hallam, mother, so I kiss you before I go;” and she rose up and kissed the handsome fellow, and watched him away, and when he turned and lifted his hat to her, she blessed him, and thanked God that he had let her live to see Antony’s son so good and worthy an inheritor of the old name and place.