CHAPTER X
THE BROADER MEANING
It is surprising how quickly any situation can be assimilated. Be it ever so pleasant or ever so painful, we get accustomed to its demands surprisingly soon, and whether it is the fact that one has just gotten a fortune, or just gotten the toothache, in either case it seems as if one had had it always, before one has hardly had it at all.
Lassie learned this with great rapidity. Before three days had passed by, she discovered that the deep and earnest joy in Alva's mind had eradicated all the horror in her own. Alva's love ceased to seem shocking—it seemed, instead, more like some beautiful, mysterious wonder. Lassie came to hear her friend talk without any distress—only with a sort of wistful ignorance—a longing to fathom depths not before even apprehended.
"It doesn't strike me as it did at first at all," she said to Ingram one night, as they went for the mail together. "All that I think of now is how happy she looks. Did you ever see any one look as happy as she does?"
"She's very happy, surely," said Ingram; "but what uses me up is that she is looking forward so. Why, that man is dying—he may die any day—and she thinks that he will come here. He can't ever come here, not possibly!"
"Oh, can't he?" Lassie cried, in real distress, "are you sure of that?"
"Of course. He knows it, too."
"But she doesn't know it?"