“Nothing to be afraid of!” Graham repeated.
Oh, the blessedness of childhood! Some words came back to the man as he sat there—“a great gulf fixed.” It seemed to him that there was, indeed, a great gulf fixed, a well-nigh impassable flood, between the fearless thought of this child and the dark clamor and confusion of his own consciousness.
“Mamma was telling me more about the sea last night,” Gerald went on. “She says there’s lots of diff’rent kinds of seas. Some of them have very big names. There’s one that begins with ‘Dif—’ but I don’t remember the rest.”
“Difficulty?” Graham suggested. In spite of himself the boy kept dragging him out of his slough of despair.
Gerald nodded.
“Do you know about that sea?” he asked.
“I ought to; I’ve been tossed about on it often enough.”
“And there’s one that ends in ‘row.’ I remember that because row made me think of a boat.”
“Sorrow?” Graham asked.
“Yes. Do you know about that one, too?”