“And after all, contentment with things as they are, would answer every purpose,” said Miss Elizabeth.
“Yes, but there are some things with which it is impossible to be contented—without wishing to change them, I mean—debt, and sickness, and having too much to do. And there are some things in people’s lives that cannot be changed.”
“And with such things we must just try and content ourselves,” said Elizabeth.
“Yes. And contentment depends more on ourselves, and less on other folk, than happiness does. And so we are safer with just contentment,” said Katie, and in a little she added, “Submission to God’s will, that would be contentment.”
“That would be happiness,” said Elizabeth, and there was nothing more said for a long time.
They were sitting in Miss Elizabeth’s sitting-room, a perfect room to Katie Fleming’s mind, and the only light came from the red embers of the wood-fire, now falling low. Miss Elizabeth was leaning back among the cushions of her father’s great arm-chair, and Katie sat on a low chair opposite, with a book on her lap. Miss Elizabeth was “seeing things in the fire,” Katie knew, by the look on her face, wondering what she saw. She looked “like a picture,” sitting there in her pretty dress, with her cheek upon her hand. What a soft white hand it was, with its one bright ring sparkling in the firelight! Katie looked at it, and then at her own. Hers was not very large, but it was red and roughened, bearing traces of her daily work. She held it up and looked at it in the firelight, not at all knowing why she did it, but with the strangest feeling of discomfort. It was not the difference of the hands that troubled her. Somehow she seemed to be looking, not at the two hands, but at the two lives, hers and Miss Elizabeth’s.
For Miss Elizabeth’s was a pleasant life, though she had looked grave when she said so. She had so many things to enjoy—her music, her reading, her flowers, with only pleasant household duties, and above all she had leisure. Katie thought of her as she had seen her often, sitting in the church, or in the garden among her flowers, or under the trees in the village street, looking so fair and sweet, so different from any one else, so very different from Katie herself, and a momentary overpowering discontent seized her—discontent with herself, her home, her manner of life, with the constant daily work which seemed to come to nothing but just a bare living. It was the same thing over and over again, housework and dairy-work, and waking and sleeping, with nothing to show for it all at the year’s end. What was the good of it all?
Katie let her book fall on the floor as she put her hands together with a sudden impatient movement, and the sound startled her out of her vexing thoughts.
“What would grannie say, I wonder, if she knew?” muttered she, as she stooped to pick up the book. She felt her face grow hot, and then she laughed at her foolishness, and looked up to meet Miss Elizabeth’s eye.
“What is it, Katie? What are you thinking about?”