"My dear," she said, without prelude or apology, "I have a thing to say to you. God does not give us our troubles to think about; that's all. I have lived more years than you. I know that He never gives us our troubles to think about."
"I don't know who's going to think about them if we don't!" said
Sharley, half aggrieved.
"Supposing nobody thinks of them, where's the harm done? Mark my words, child: He sends them to drive us out of ourselves,—to drive us out. He had much rather we would go of our own accord, but if we won't go we must be sent, for go we must. That's just about what we're put into this world for, and we're not fit to go out of it till we have found this out."
Now the moralities of conversation were apt to glide off from Sharley like rain-drops from gutta-percha, and I cannot assert that these words would have made profound impression upon her had not Halcombe Dike's mother happened to say them.
Be that as it may, she certainly took them home with her, and pondered them in her heart; pondered till late in her feverish, sleepless night, till her pillow grew wet, and her heart grew still. About midnight she jumped out into the cold, and kneeled, with her face hidden in the bed.
"O, I've been a naughty girl!" she said, just as she might have said it ten years ago. She felt so small, and ignorant, and weak that night.
Out of such smallness, and ignorance, and weakness great knowledge and strength may have beautiful growth. They came in time to Sharley, but it was a long, slow time. Moppet was just as unendurable, the baby just as fretful, life just as joyless, as if she had taken no new outlook upon it, made no new, tearful plans about it.
"Calico! calico!" she cried out a dozen times a day; "nothing but calico!"
But by and by it dawned in her thoughts that this was a very little matter to cry out about. What if God meant that some lives should be "all just alike," and like nothing fresh or bonnie, and that hers should be one? That was his affair. Hers was to use the dull gray gift he gave—whatever gift he gave—as loyally and as cheerily as she would use treasures of gold and rose-tint. He knew what he was doing. What he did was never forgetful or unkind. She felt—after a long time, and in a quiet way—that she could be sure of that.
No matter about Halcombe Dike, and what was gone. No matter about the little black aprons, and what was coming. He understood all about that. He would take care of it.