'But if it makes your unhappy sister's mind more comfortable? If she feels free from anxiety here? If she feels you are safe here?' I passionately reasoned.
'I don't want to be safe.'
'Oh Dolly—you're not going to break out again?' I asked, as anxiously every bit as poor Mrs. Barnes would have asked.
Dolly laughed. 'I'll never do anything again that makes Kitty unhappy,' she said. 'But I do like the feeling—' she made a movement with her arms as though they were wings—'oh, I like the feeling of having room!'
September 30th.
The weather is better again, and there has been a pause in our strivings. Mrs. Barnes and I have drifted, tired both of us, I resting in that refuge of the weak, the putting off of making up my mind, back into talking only of the situation and the view. If Mrs. Barnes were either less good or more intelligent! But the combination of non-intelligence with goodness is unassailable. You can't get through. Nothing gets through. You give in. You are flattened out. You become a slave. And your case is indeed hopeless if the non-intelligent and good, are at the same time the victims, nobly enduring, of undeserved misfortune.
Evening.
A really remarkable thing happened to-day: I've had a prayer answered. I shall never dare pray again. I prayed for a man, any man, to come and leaven us, and I've got him.
Let me set it down in order.
This afternoon on our walk, soon after we had left the house and were struggling along against gusts of wind and whirling leaves in the direction, as it happened, of the carriage road up from the valley, Dolly said, 'Who is that funny little man coming towards us?'