“Hush! Lyle, hush! that is wrong.” And then she was silent. The little boy stood by her side, his face still burning with indignation.
Soon Olive's trouble subsided. She whispered to herself, “It must be always thus—I will try to bear it,” and then she became composed. She bade her little friend adieu, telling him she was going back into the house.
“But you will forgive all, you will not think of anything that would grieve you?” said Lyle, hesitatingly.
Olive promised, with a patient smile.
“And to prove this, will you kiss your little knight once again?”
Her soft drooping hair swept his cheek; her lips touched his. Lyle Derwent never forgot this kiss of Olive Rothesay's.
The young girl entered the house. Within it was the quiet of a Sunday afternoon. Her mother had gone to a distant church, and there was none left “to keep house,” save one of the maids and the old grey cat, that dosed on the window-sill in the sunshine. The cat was a great pet of Olive's; and the moment it saw its young mistress, it was purring round her feet, following her from room to room, never resting until she took it up in her arms. The love even of a dumb animal touched her then. She sat down on her own little low chair, spread on her lap the smooth white apron which Miss Pussy loved—and so she leaned back, soothed by the monotonous song of her purring favourite, and thinking that there was at least one living creature who loved her, and whom she could make perfectly happy.
She sat at the open window, seeing only the high, green privet hedge that enclosed the front garden, the little wicket-gate, and the blue sky beyond. How still everything was! By degrees the footsteps of a few late church-goers vanished along the road; the bells ceased—first the quick, sharp clang of the new church, and then the musical peal that rang out from the grey Norman tower. There never were such bells as those of Oldchurch! But they melted away in silence; and then the dreamy quietness of the hour stole over Olive's sense.
She thought of many things—things which might have been sad, but for the slumberous peace that took away all pain. It was just the hour when she once used to sit on the floor, leaning against Elspie's knees, generally reading aloud in the Book which alone the nurse permitted on Sundays. Now and then—once in particular she remembered—old Elspie fell asleep; and then Olive turned to her favourite study, the Book of Revelations. Childlike she terrified herself over the mysterious prophecies of the latter days, until at last she forgot the gloom and horror, in reading of the “beautiful city, New Jerusalem.”
She seemed to see it—its twelve gates, angel-guarded, its crystal river, its many-fruited tree—the Tree of Life. Her young but glowing fancy created out of these marvels a visible material paradise. She knew not that Heaven is only the continual presence of the Eternal. Yet she was happy, and in her dreams she never pictured the land beyond the grave but there came back to her, as though the nearest foreshadowing of it, the visions of that Sunday afternoon.