“And how do you like corresponding with Phil now?”
Agnes owned, with blushes, that she still dreaded the task for some days before, and felt particularly gay when it was done. Her mother believed that, if infants could think and look forward, they would be far more terrified with the prospect of having to walk on their two legs all their lives, than lame people could be at having to learn the art in part over again. Grown people are apt to doubt whether they can learn a new language, though children make no difficulty about it: the reason of which is, that grown people see at one view the whole labour, while children do not look beyond their daily task. Experience, however, always brings relief. Experience shows that every effort comes at its proper time, and that there is variety or rest in the intervals. People who have to wash and dress every morning have other things to do in the after part of the day; and, as the old fable tells us, the clock that has to tick, before it is worn out, so many millions of times, as it perplexes the mind to think of, has exactly the same number of seconds to do it in; so that it never has more work on its hands than it can get through. So Hugh would find that he could move about on each separate occasion, as he wanted; and practice would, in time, enable him to do it without any more thought than it now cost him to put all the bones of his hands in order, so as to carry his tea and bread-and-butter to his mouth.
“But that is not all—nor half what I mean,” said Hugh. “No, my dear; nor half what you will have to make up your mind to bear. You will have a great deal to bear, Hugh. You resolved to bear it all patiently, I remember: but what is it that you dread the most?”
“Oh! All manner of things. I can never do things like other people.”
“Some things. You can never play cricket, as every Crofton boy would like to do. You can never dance at your sisters’ Christmas parties.”
“Oh! Mamma!” cried Agnes, with tears in her eyes, and the thought in her mind that it was cruel to talk so.
“Go on! Go on!” cried Hugh, brightening. “You know what I feel, mother; and you don’t keep telling me, as Aunt Shaw does (and even Agnes sometimes), that it wont signify much, and that I shall not care, and all that; making out that it is no misfortune hardly, when I know what it is, and they don’t.”
“That is a common way of trying to give comfort, and it is kindly meant,” said Mrs Proctor. “But those who have suffered much themselves know a better way. The best way is not to deny any of the trouble or the sorrow, and not to press on the sufferer any comforts which he cannot now see and enjoy. If comforts arise, he will enjoy them as they come.”
“Now then, go on,” said Hugh. “What else?”
“There will be little checks and mortifications continually—when you see boys leaping over this, and climbing that, and playing at the other, while you must stand out, and can only look on. And some people will pity you in a way you don’t like; and some may even laugh at you.”