“Why not?”
“It frightens me to think of fifty years,” said Mysie, with quivering lips. Then suddenly she said, “I wonder which are the happiest, they or we!”
“Let us go to-morrow and ask them,” said Arthur, more lightly, perhaps, than he felt.
“Oh, yes! Let us go the first thing to-morrow and take them some flowers ready for their breakfast—they always breakfast at eight.”
“Very well,” said Arthur, “and they will give us some breakfast. I promised George to take him out shooting to-morrow—the rabbits are really getting intolerable. I want Hugh to come home early and join us.”
They soon reached Saint Michael’s and dispersed in search of places, for the church was crowded. Arthur and Mysie had the good luck to find them side by side. Mysie’s feelings had been somewhat disturbed by what had passed, and she was glad of the quiet and of the service, which took her out of herself. The sermons at Saint Michael’s were considered striking, and this one was about thankfulness. “He giveth us all things richly to enjoy.” Mysie listened, and thought that she had more to be thankful for than anyone in the world; and she turned her listening into a prayer that she might never forget it. Arthur listened too, but his thoughts were less defined and were pervaded by a certain sense of the prettiness of Mysie’s face in its blue setting.
And then they stood up and sang—
“Brief life is here our portion,
Brief sorrow, short-lived care;
The life that knows no ending,
The tearless life, is there.”
Brief? And yet they might keep their golden wedding after those long fifty years!
Fifty years of going to church together, of sorrows shared and joys doubled! And as Mysie’s heart went forward to what those joys and sorrows might be it was no wonder that she walked home hushed and silent, though there never came to her a moment’s doubt of how she might regard her young lover after the fifty years were past.