CHAPTER III
IN THE SHADOW OF WAR
Last Wednesday I spent the day at Fishburn Court. My visits seem to mean so much to Aunt Elspeth, now that her time is divided between her bed and wheeled chair. I improvised a costume and did the song and dance for her that I am going to give in the French Relief entertainment next week. And I made a blueberry pie for dinner, and set the little kitchen in shining order, and put fresh bows on her cap, and straightened out all the bureau drawers.
When everything you do is appreciated and admired and praised until you are fairly basking in approval, it makes you feel so good inside that you want to keep on that way forever. You just love to be sweet and considerate. But afterwards it's such a comedown to go back home to those who take it as a matter of course that you should be helpful, and who feel it is their duty to improve your character by telling you what your duty is. It rubs you the wrong way, and makes life much harder.
Somehow, going to Fishburn Court is like climbing up into the Pilgrim monument and looking down on the town. Seen from that height, the things that loomed up so big when you were down on their level shrink to nothing. Maybe it is because Uncle Darcy and Aunt Elspeth have lived so very, very long that they can look down on life that way and see it from a great height as God does. I always think of them when I read that verse, "A thousand years in thy sight is but as yesterday." That is why nothing seems to matter to them very much but loving each other and their neighbors as themselves.
I came away from there resolved to turn over a new leaf. I am sorry now that I said what I did the other day in the closet, but I don't feel that I have a right to blot it out of this record. The good and the bad should stand together in one's memoirs. It makes a character seem more human. I never felt that I had anything in common with Washington until I read that he sometimes gave away to violent fits of anger.
I am now resolved to make those Busy Bees the power for good which Barby thinks I can, and quit thinking of my own feelings in the matter, of how disagreeable it is to have them eternally tagging after me. After all, what difference will it make a thousand years from now if they do tag? What difference if one little ant in the universe is happy or unhappy for one atom of time? When you think of yourself that way, as just a tiny ant sitting on the equator of eternity you can put up with almost anything.