“Happy—ah!” said Cecilia, with a long sigh. “This world is not the place to find happiness.”
“No, it isn’t,” said my Aunt Kezia, “for people who spend all their time hunting for it. It is a deal better to let happiness hunt for you. You don’t go the right way to get it, child.”
“I do not, indeed!” answered Cecilia, with a very sorrowful look. “Ah, Mrs Kezia, ‘the heart knoweth his own bitterness.’ That is Scripture, I believe.”
“Yes, it does,” said my aunt, “and it makes a deal of it, too.”
“Oh dear, Mrs Kezia!” cried Cecilia. “How could anybody make unhappiness?”
“If you don’t, you are the first girl I have met of your sort,” saith my Aunt Kezia, turning down the hem of a kerchief. Then, when she came to the end of the hem, she looked up at Cecilia. “My dear, there is a lesson we all have to learn, and the sooner you learn it, the better and happier woman you will be. The end of selfishness is not pleasure, but pain. You don’t think so, do you? Ah, but you will find as you go through life, that always you are not only better, but happier, with God’s blessing on the thing you don’t like, than without it on the thing you do. Ay, it always turns to ashes in your mouth when you will have the quails instead of the manna. I’ve noted many a time—for when I was a girl, and later than that, I was as self-willed as any of you—that sometimes when I have set my heart upon a thing, and would have it, then, if I may speak it with reverence, God has given way to me. Like a father with an obstinate child, He has said to me, as it were, ‘Poor foolish child! You will have this glittering piece of mischief. Well, have your way: and when you have cut yourself badly with it, and are bleeding and smarting as I did not wish to see you, come back to your Father and tell Him all about it, and be healed and comforted.’ Ah dear me, the dullest of us is quite as clever as she need be in making rods for her own back. And then, if our Father keep us from hurting ourselves, and won’t let us have the bright knife to cut our fingers with, how we do mewl and whine, to be sure! We are just a set of silly babes, my dear—the best of us.”
“My Aunt Dorothea once told me,” said I, “that the Papists have what they call ‘exercises of detachment.’ Perhaps you would think them good things, Aunt Kezia. For instance, if an abbess sees a nun who seems to have a fancy for any little thing particularly, she will take it from her and give it to somebody else.”
“Eh, poor foolish things!” said Aunt Kezia. “Bits of children playing with the Father’s tools! They are more like to hurt themselves a deal than to get His work done. Ay, God has His exercises of detachment, and they are far harder than man’s. He knows how to do it. He can lay a finger right on the core of your heart, the very spot where it hurts worst. Men can seldom do that. They would sometimes if they could, I believe; but they cannot, except God guides them to it. Many’s the time I’ve been asked, with a deal of hesitation and apology, to do a thing that did not cost me a farthing’s worth of grief or labour; and as lightly as could be, to do another which would have gone far to break either my back or my heart. Different folks see things in such different ways. I’ll be bound, now, if each of us were asked to pick out for one another the thing in this house that each cared most about, we should well-nigh all of us guess wrong. We know so little of each other’s inmost hearts. That little kingdom, your own heart, is a thing that you must keep to yourself; you can’t let another into it. You can bring him to the gate, and let him peep in, and show him a few of your treasures; but you cannot give him the freedom of the city. Depend upon it, you would think very differently of me from what you do, and I should think differently of each of you, if we could see each other’s inmost hearts.”
“Better or worse, Mrs Kezia?” said Cecilia.
“May be the one, and may be the other, my dear. It would hang a little on the heart you looked at, and a great deal on the one who looked at it. I dare say we should all get one lesson we need badly—we might learn to bear with each other. ’Tis so easy to think, ‘Oh, she cannot understand me! she never had this pain or that sorrow.’ Whereas, if you could see her as she really is, you would find she knew more about it than you did, and understood some other things beside, which were dark riddles to you. That is often a mountain to one which is only a molehill to another. And trouble is as it is taken. If there were no more troubles in this world than what we give each other in pure kindness or in simple ignorance, girls, there would be plenty left.”