“But—do you mean you and I?”
“Yes. Between us. Share. Then it would only cost half, and you look so—you look exactly as if you wanted it just as much as I do—as if you ought to have a rest—have something happy happen to you.”
“Why, but we don’t know each other.”
“But just think how well we would if we went away together for a month! And I’ve saved for a rainy day, and I expect so have you, and this is the rainy day—look at it—”
“She is unbalanced,” thought Mrs. Arbuthnot; yet she felt strangely stirred.
“Think of getting away for a whole month—from everything—to heaven—”
“She shouldn’t say things like that,” thought Mrs. Arbuthnot. “The vicar—” Yet she felt strangely stirred. It would indeed be wonderful to have a rest, a cessation.
Habit, however, steadied her again; and years of intercourse with the poor made her say, with the slight though sympathetic superiority of the explainer, “But then, you see, heaven isn’t somewhere else. It is here and now. We are told so.”
She became very earnest, just as she did when trying patiently to help and enlighten the poor. “Heaven is within us,” she said in her gentle low voice. “We are told that on the very highest authority. And you know the lines about the kindred points, don’t you—”
“Oh yes, I know them,” interrupted Mrs. Wilkins impatiently.