Calm in thunder storms, and calm in sunshine, and sad, sad as death through ’em all, and most as still.
And I sot demute and see it go on as long as I could, a-feelin’ that yearnin’ sort of pity for her that we can’t help feelin’ for all dumb creeters when they are in pain, deeper than we feel for talkative agony—yes, I always feel a deeper pity and a more pitiful one for sech, and can’t help it.
And so one day, when I wuz a-settin’ at my knittin’ in the settin’-room, and she a-settin’ by me sad and still, a-contogglin’ on a summer coat of my Josiah’s, I watched the patient, white face and the slim, patient, white fingers a-workin’ on patiently, and I stood it as long as I could; and then I spoke out kinder sudden, being took, as it were, by the side of myself, and almost spoke my thoughts out loud, onbeknown to me, and sez I:
“My dear!” (She wuzn’t more’n twenty-two at the outside.)
“My dear! I wish you would tell me what makes you so unhappy; I’d love to help you if I could.”
She dropped her work, looked up in my face sort o’ wonderin’, yet searchin’.
I guess that she see that I wuz sincere, and that I pitied her dretfully. Her lips begun to tremble. She dropped her work down onto the floor, and come and knelt right down by me and put her head in my lap and busted out a-cryin’.
You know the deeper the water is, and the thicker the ice closes over it, the greater the upheaval and overflow when the ice breaks up.
She sobbed and she sobbed; and I smoothed back her hair, and kinder patted her head, and babied her, and let her cry all she wanted to.
My gingham apron wuz new, but it wuz fast color and would wash, and I felt that the tears would do her good.