Does not all creation join with the angelic choirs to hymn her praises? What song of mortal measure, sung by mortal tongue, can equal in strength and melody that heavenly canticle? Nay, let us stand rather with bowed head and reverent mien, lifting our hearts in silent ecstasy, thankful if we may so much as catch a distant echo of those "divine praises," borne to us maybe on the wings of the far west wind; or a reflection of the golden glory of that paradise, ensnared in the luminous fragility of a sunset cloud.
It is all we can hope for on this lower earth, and who of us dare count on ever realising the terrible sublimity, the awful purity, of "the beatific vision"?
It was very early in the morning when little Marianne came running down the broad terrace steps, and stood alone amidst the varied riches of Esther's flower garden. Her sunny hair was all unbound, and lay upon her shoulders and about her forehead, still damp from the morning's bath, glistening like threads of gold washed in a wavelet of sunshine. Her white frock glanced in and out against the tender background of early green foliage, as she ran from flower to flower, plucking here a blossom, and there a bud, studying each attentively before adding them to the bouquet in her hand, with the gravity of childhood, which invests every action with a separate importance.
And as she flew about rejoicing, as only children and animals can rejoice, in the mere pleasure of being, she sang from time to time the rhyming measure of a nursery song, which fell unheeded from her lips, and that had no sense or meaning, but sprang as spontaneously from her heart as did the song of the little brown thrush, who was pouring out his weight of thanksgiving, with such overwhelming rapture as to shake his very soul, and cause the quivering cat-kin on which he perched to bend and sway beneath its vibrations.
The windows of the Folly were still closed and curtained. Its inmates were as yet scarce turning on their couches of down, or realising that another day had begun for them, another day opened out full of sublime opportunities for good or evil. With the passing of another hour they would perforce be roused from their dreams by the inevitable early cup of tea, without which species of dram-drinking no woman of fashion can support the fatigues of her toilette, or the embarrassments of the morning post. But that is sixty minutes off yet—sixty long minutes—three thousand, six hundred seconds—and in the meantime, before the inevitable overtakes us, let us follow the preacher's advice and make the most of it. "Yet a little more sleep, and a little more slumber, a little more folding of the hands to sleep."
Time enough to take up the burden of living when that burden is ruthlessly thrust upon us, and we bow our shoulders with accustomed habit to receive its weight.
But little Marianne entertained no such pessimistic views; to her the joy of life was simply in the act of living, and its triumph in escaping from the tyranny of Sarah, and being absolutely free to tear her frock or rumple her golden hair without the visible personality of that Nemesis. Presently Trim, her beloved Skye terrier, came leaping out to her as fast as his very short legs and corpulent body would allow him to travel; and then began a series of romps in which it was difficult to say which took the most satisfaction—the dog or the child. Trim, however, was the first to give up and retire on his laurels, selecting a particularly green spot of turf beneath a lilac-tree in full bloom, and after solemnly turning round and round in an unsuccessful race with his own tail, settled himself comfortably thereon, and with the tip of his red tongue showing between his teeth, watched the child with a benign and patronising expression. Marianne, thus deserted, returned to her flower-gathering, apostrophising Trim as she did so.
"You are a lazy dog, Trim. I'm 'shamed of you! It's perfectly redic'lous your pretending to be tired; you can't be; it's only putting on shapes, just as Miss Dick says, and shapes isn't very nice manners in such a wee little doggie as you!"
Trim snapped at an intruding fly, and yawned for answer, then settled his nose on his paws and went to sleep, and Marianne, thus left companionless, grew a little weary of solitude.
"I guess I've got enough flowers now for Popsey's buffday," she said, regarding critically the glowing mass of blossoms held very tightly in her hot little hand. "I guess I'll go in and put 'em on his dressing-table, and cry 'boo' very loud in his ear. Then he'll have to get up!"