—provided there was any hope that the poor fellow had gone to heaven; if not, it was bad philosophy and worse religion. Did not David dance before the Lord with all his might? A Bible which is full of happy battle-cries: ‘Rejoice in the Lord! make a joyful noise unto him! Give thanks unto the Lord, for his mercy endureth!’—a Bible which exhausts its splendid wealth of rhetoric to make us understand that the coming life is a life of joy, no more threatens to make nuns than mutes of us. I expect that you will hear some of Roy’s very old jokes, see the sparkle in his eye, listen to his laughing voice, lighten up the happy days as gleefully as you may choose; and that—”
Faith appeared upon the scene just then, with the interesting information that she had bitten her tongue; so we talked no more.
How pleasant—how pleasant this is! I never supposed before that God would let any one laugh in heaven.
I wonder if Roy has seen the President. Aunt Winifred says she does not doubt it. She thinks that all the soldiers must have crowded up to meet him, and “O,” she says, “what a sight to see!”
VII.
May 12th.
Aunt Winifred has said something about going, but I cannot yet bear to hear of such a thing. She is to stay a while longer.
16th.
We have been over to-night to the grave.
She proposed to go by herself, thinking, I saw, with the delicacy with which she always thinks, that I would rather not be there with another. Nor should I, nor could I, with any other than this woman. It is strange. I wished to go there with her. I had a vague, unreasoning feeling that she would take away some of the bitterness of it, as she has taken the bitterness of much else.