“Because he is so cold; he does not kiss you, Bella, so often as my mother does; and, besides, when he forbids your going away, he does not say, as mother does—my little girl will be tired, she had better not go—but he says only—Isabel must not go. I wonder what makes him talk so?”
“Why, Paul, he is a man, and doesn’t—at any rate, I love him, Paul. Besides, my mother is sick, you know.”
“But Isabel, my mother will be your mother, too. Come, Bella, we will go ask her if we may go.”
And there I am, the happiest of boys, pleading with the kindest of mothers. And the young heart leans into that mother’s heart—none of the void now that will overtake it like an opening Korah gulf, in the years that are to come. It is joyous, full, and running over!
“You may go,” she says, “if your uncle is willing.”
“But mamma, I am afraid to ask him, I do not believe he loves me.”
“Don’t say so, Paul,” and she draws you to her side, as if she would supply by her own love the lacking love of a universe.
“Go, with your cousin Isabel, and ask him kindly; and if he says no—make no reply.”
And with courage, we go hand in hand, and steal in at the library door. There he sits—I seem to see him now—in the old wainscoted room, covered over with books and pictures; and he wears his heavy-rimmed spectacles, and is poring over some big volume, full of hard words, that are not in any spelling-book. We step up softly; and Isabel lays her little hand upon his arm; and he turns, and says—“Well, my little daughter?”
I ask if we may go down to the big rock in the meadow?