The fire leaped, spluttered and hissed with capricious change. Outside the weather was grey, with a drab touch in the air. The sky was a shivery colour. Cecilia and Father McGowan sat on a wide davenport in the library.
"Where is he now?" asked Father McGowan.
"Playing tennis with Marjory," said Cecilia. She again dabbed Father McGowan's handkerchief on her eyes.
"Oh, drat!" said Father McGowan fiercely. He put his other hand over the small one which lay in his. Cecilia tightened her fingers about his thumb.
"I've been so miserable," she said, "that I've even thought of being a nun. I would if it weren't for papa, and John,—and my hair. (I couldn't bear to have it cut.) And he shows so plainly that he likes her, and then she tells me what he says,—oh, dear!"
"Darn fool!" said Father McGowan. "Is he crazy?" He glared at Cecilia with his question, and she laughed unsteadily.
"I'm ashamed to bother you," she said, "but it helps, and I can't tell papa. I think papa'd kill him. He's done nothing wrong, you know. You can't help what your heart does." She avoided the fat priest's eyes and looked down at her ringless left hand. "There have been lots of men," she said, "but none I could even dream of marrying. This is different, and—and I do! His eyes are so dear and so is he, but I would love him anyway. I think he's the rest of me."
"Drat!" said Father McGowan forcibly. "Drat him!"
"I wish I'd been left in the flat. Then I'd have grown up to marry some teamster. It's only when you reach for things too high above you that your arms begin to ache,—then papa and John, all the time misunderstanding each other. Both of them being hurt by this money,—and I—I love him so!"
"Cecilia," said Father McGowan, "this world is full of hurts. You have to take them as you do the weather, without a question. Some one put them here to polish our little souls.... After you are fifty you will accept them with thankfulness and cease questioning. The faith of childhood will return in a bigger way, with a belief in the absolutely unknown. Some one put them here to polish our little souls. They are here, let them polish, not scratch."