"When you used that word, mother, it made me feel just as if Ida wasn't coming back."
"I don't know why it is," said Mrs. Harding, thoughtfully, "but I've had that same feeling several times today. I've felt just as if something or other would happen to prevent Ida's coming back."
"That is only because she's never been away before," said the cooper, cheerfully. "It isn't best to borrow trouble, Martha; we shall have enough of it without."
"You never said a truer word, brother," said Rachel, mournfully. "Man is born to trouble as the sparks fly upward. This world is a vale of tears, and a home of misery. Folks may try and try to be happy, but that isn't what they're sent here for."
"You never tried very hard, Aunt Rachel," said Jack.
"It's my fate to be misjudged," said his aunt, with the air of a martyr.
"I don't agree with you in your ideas about life, Rachel," said her brother. "Just as there are more pleasant than stormy days, so I believe there is much more of brightness than shadow in this life of ours, if we would only see it."
"I can't see it," said Rachel.
"It seems to me, Rachel, you take more pains to look at the clouds than the sun."
"Yes," chimed in Jack, "I've noticed whenever Aunt Rachel takes up the newspaper, she always looks first at the deaths, and next at the fatal accidents and steamboat explosions."