In truth, although she had seemed to fear all for herself, her great dread had been to hear Cosmo abused.
“What you must have gone through for me!” said Cosmo. “It makes me ache to think of it!”
“It will be only pleasant to look back upon, Cosmo,” returned Joan with a sad smile. “But oh for such days again as we used to have on the frozen hills! There are the hills again every winter, but will the old days ever come again, Cosmo?”
“The old days never come again,” answered Cosmo. “But do you know why, Joan?”
“No,” murmured Joan, very sadly.
“Because they would be getting in the way of the new better days, whose turn it is,” replied Cosmo. “You tell God, Joan, all about it; he will give us better days than those. To some, no doubt, it seems absurd that there should be a great hearing Life in the world; but it is what you and I need so much that we don’t see how, by any possibility, to get on without it! It cannot well look absurd to us! And if you should ever find you cannot pray any more, tell me, and I will try to help you. I don’t think that time will ever come to me. I can’t tell—but always hitherto, when I have seemed to be at the last gasp, things have taken a turn, and it has grown possible to go on again.”
“Ah, you are younger than me, Cosmo!” said Joan, more sadly than ever.
Cosmo laughed.
“Don’t you show me any airs on that ground,” he said. “Leave that to Agnes. She is two years older than I, and used always to say when we were children, that she was old enough to be my mother.”
“But I am more than two years older than you, Cosmo,” said Joan.