Lucilla apparently found the wisdom of her sister’s observation too obvious for reply.
“Not the only reason, anyway.”
Lucilla’s silence was again an assent.
“Gossiping in the morning, my daughters?”
The Canon’s deep, pleasant voice preceded him as he paused outside the open window.
“Is that as it should be? Lucilla, my dear love, at your desk again? You look pale—you should be in the open air. Is not the day a glorious one? When this world about us is so unutterably fair, does it not make one think of ‘eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither hath it entered into the heart of man to conceive, what things He hath prepared for them that love him’?”
The Canon’s uplifted gaze was as joyful as it was earnest.
“Heaven seems very near, on such a day,” he said softly.
Val, always outspoken, and struggling with the unease of her own discontent, joined him at the window and said wistfully:
“I can’t feel it like you do, Father. I wish I could.”