"Oh, what a strange, sad thing life is at the best! Is it worth being born and suffering so much for all the joy we find?"
"No, indeed, if this life were all; but it is only the faint dawn of a brighter, grander existence, more worthy the gift of a God."
"But we must die to get to that fuller, higher life;" I said, suddenly remembering poor Blake's dead wife.
She smiled compassionately.
"It is hard convincing you young people that even death may be a tender friend, a welcome messenger. But we won't talk in this strain any longer, I scarce know why we drifted into it. I want your first impressions of home to be joyous, for they are apt to haunt us long after we make the discovery that they were not correct."
"I wonder if you are not something of a philosopher? I never heard any one talk just like you."
"Certainly not anything so formidable, and learned as that. I am only a plain little woman, with no special mission except to make those around me happy."
"That is a very beautiful mission, and I am sure you meet with success, which is not the fate of every one with a career."
"Ah, if you begin praising me I must leave; but first let me tell you dinner will be served at six. Mr. Winthrop is a great student, and is already, for so young a man, a very successful author; and he likes dinner late so as to have all the longer time for hard work. The evenings he takes for light reading and rest."
I must confess I was beginning to get afraid of my guardian. I expected to find him in manners and appearance something like our school professors, with a tendency to criticise my slender literary acquirements.