“Give it back to God, and never mind it.”
“But would that be right?”
“One day, when I was a little girl, so high, I couldn’t eat my porridge, and sat looking at it. ‘Eat your porridge,’ said my mother. ‘I don’t want it,’ I answered. ‘There’s nothing else for you,’ said my mother—for she had not learned so much from my father then, as she did before he died. ‘Hoots!’ said my father—I cannot, dear Euphra, make his words into English.”
“No, no, don’t,” said Euphra; “I shall understand them perfectly.”
“‘Hoots! Janet, my woman!’ said my father. ‘Gie the bairn a dish o’ tay. Wadna ye like some tay, Maggy, my doo?’ ‘Ay wad I,’ said I. ‘The parritch is guid eneuch,’ said my mother. ‘Nae doot aboot the parritch, woman; it’s the bairn’s stamack, it’s no the parritch.’ My mother said no more, but made me a cup of such nice tea; for whenever she gave in, she gave in quite. I drank it; and, half from anxiety to please my mother, half from reviving hunger, attacked the porridge next, and ate it up. ‘Leuk at that!’ said my father. ‘Janet, my woman, gie a body the guid that they can tak’, an’ they’ll sune tak’ the guid that they canna. Ye’re better noo, Maggy, my doo?’ I never told him that I had taken the porridge too soon after all, and had to creep into the wood, and be sick. But it is all the same for the story.”
Euphra laughed a feeble but delighted laugh, and applied the story for herself.
So the winter days passed on.
“I wish I could live till the spring,” said Euphra. “I should like to see a snowdrop and a primrose again.”
“Perhaps you will, dear; but you are going into a better spring. I could almost envy you, Euphra.”
“But shall we have spring there?”