“Mother, I don't see how you can stand it. It would break my heart to see Cicely's broken-hearted look, and hear her talk for half a day; and you have to hear her all the time.” And she wiped her eyes.
And I says, “Tongue can't tell, Tirzah Ann, how your ma's heart does ache for her. And,” says I, “if I knew myself, I had got to die and leave a boy in the world with such temptations round him, and such a chin on him, why, I don't know what I should do, and what I shouldn't do.”
And says Tirzah Ann, “That is jest the way I feel, mother;” and we both of us wiped our eyes.
But I held firm before her, and reminded her every time, of what she knew already,—“that there was One who was strong, who comforted her in her hour of need, and He would watch over the boy.”
And sometimes she would be soothed for a little while, and sometimes she wouldn't.
Wall, this day, as I said, she had worried and worried and worried. And at last I had soothed her down, real soothed. And she asked me before I went down-stairs, for a poem, a favorite one of hers,—“The Celestial Country.” And I gin it to her. And she said I might shet the door, and she would read a spell, and she guessed she should drop to sleep.
And as I was goin' out of the room, she called me back to hear a verse or two she particularly liked, about the “endless, ageless peace of Syon:”—
“True vision of true beauty,
Sweet cure of all distrest.”
And I stood calm, and heard her with a smooth, placid face, though I knew my pies was a scorchin' in the oven, for I smelt 'em. I did well by Cicely.