“But, why are you so sure?”
“Perhaps,” she returned, smiling, “seventy years makes one sure of some things.”
Ho exclaimed passionately: “But you do not know—you cannot know—how my life, my dreams, my plans, my hopes, my—everything—has been broken into bits!”
She answered calmly, pointing to Elbow Rock: “Look there, Brian. See how the river is broken into bits. See how its smoothly flowing, onward sweep is suddenly changed to wild, chaotic turmoil; how it rages and fumes and frets and smashes itself against the rocks. But it goes on just the same. Life cannot be always calm and smoothly flowing like the peaceful Bend. But life can always go on. Life must always go on. And you will find, my dear boy, that a little way below Elbow Rock there is another quiet stretch.”
When he spoke again there was a note of almost reverence in his voice.
“Auntie Sue, was there ever a break in your life? Were your dreams and plans ever smashed into bits?”
For a little, she did not answer; then she said, bravely: “Yes, Brian; several times. Once,—years and years ago,—I do not know how I managed to go on. I felt, then, as you feel now; but, somehow, I managed, and so found the calm places. The last hard spot came quite recently.” She paused, wondering what he would do if she were to tell him how he himself had made the hard spot. “But, now,” she continued, “I am hoping that the rest of the way will be calm and untroubled.”
“I wish I could help to make it so!” he cried impulsively.
“Why, you can,” she returned quickly. “Of course you can. Perhaps that is why the current landed your boat at my garden, instead of carrying you on down the rapids to Elbow Rock. Who can say?”
A new light kindled in the man's eyes as his sensitive nature took fire at Auntie Sue's words. “I could do anything for a woman like you, Auntie Sue,” he said quietly, but with a conviction that left no room for doubt. “But you must tell me what I am to do.”