She mused again in silence.
"There's nothing to win in life, when all's said and done, but a good opinion of yourself. I've watched and I know. God is y'rself. Or put it the other way if you like: y'rself is God. So win a good opinion of yourself, and watch the glow inside you."
Queer, thought Jack, that this should be an old woman's philosophy. Yourself is God! Partly he believed it, partly he didn't. He didn't know what he believed.—Watch the glow inside you. That he understood.
He liked Gran. She was so alone in life, amid all her children. He himself was a lone wolf too: among the lambs of the family. And perhaps Red Easu was a lone wolf.
"But what was I telling you?" Gran resumed. "About your illegitimate cousin. I followed him up too. He went back beyond Atherton, and took up land. He's got a tidy place now, and he's never married. He's wrong in his head about people, but all right about the farm. I'm hoping that place'll come to Mary one day, for the child's got nothing. She's a good child—a good child. Her mother was a niece of mine."
She seemed to be going to sleep. But like Herbert, she roused again.
"Y'd better marry Mary. Make up your mind to it," she said.
And instantly he rebelled against the thought. Never.
"Perhaps I'd ought to have said: 'The best in yourself is God,'" she mused. "Perhaps that's more it. The best in yourself is God. But then who's going to say what is the best in yourself. A kind man knuckles under, and thinks it's the best in himself. And a hard man holds out, and thinks that's the best in himself. And its not good for a kind man to knuckle under, and it's not good for a hard-hearted man to hold out. What's to be done, deary-me, what's to be done. And no matter what we say, people will be as they are.—You can but watch the glow."
She really did doze off. And Jack stole away to the other side of the screen to escape her, leaving the candle burning.