And she was not of an impatient nature. After a while she forgot about the tiresomeness, and fell to watching the reflections of the brilliant colours of the jars in the puddles and on the surface of the wet pavement just below her, as she had often watched them before. They were pretty—in a sense—and yet somehow they made the surrounding dreariness drearier.
“I wonder if it does rain more here than anywhere else,” she said to herself dreamily. “What a splashing walk home we shall have! I wish we did not live up a hill—at least I think I wish we didn’t, though perhaps if our house was down here I should wish it was higher up! Perhaps it doesn’t really rain more at Craig Bay than at other places, but we notice it more. For nearly everything pleasant that ever comes to us depends on the weather.” And Betty sighed. “I could fancy,” she went on, “living in a way that would make one scarcely care what it was like out of doors. A beautiful big house with ferneries and conservatories, and lovely rooms to wander about in, and a library full of delightful books, and lots of people to stay with us and—well, yes, of course, it would be nice to go drives and rides and walks too, and to have exquisite gardens. But still life might be very pleasant even when it did rain,” and again Betty sighed. “It needn’t be anything so very tremendous, after all,” she added to herself. “Craig-Morion might be—” but a gentle touch on her shoulder made her turn. It was her sister, packages in hand, and rather embarrassed by her umbrella.
“Can you open it for me, dear?” she said, and Betty hastened to do so. “I am so afraid,” Frances went on, when Betty’s own umbrella was ready for business too, and they were both under way, “I am so afraid of dropping any of these things. Papa is so anxious to have them at once. Do you remember the day that Eira dropped the bottle of red ink—wasn’t it dreadful?” and Frances laughed a little at the recollection.
Her laugh was very sweet, but scarcely merry. There are laughs which tell of sadness more quickly almost than tears. But it was not that kind either; it was the laugh of one who is resolutely cheerful, who has learnt by experience the wisdom of making the best of things—a lesson not often learnt by the young while young, though by some it is acquired so gradually and unconsciously that on looking back from the table-land of later years they do not realise it had ever been a lesson to be learnt at all.
For its roots lie deeper than philosophy. They are to be found in unselfishness, in self-forgetting, and earnest longing to carry the burdens of others, or at least to share them.
And Frances Morion was still young, though twenty-seven. She by no means looked her age. Her life in many ways had been a healthy one in its material surroundings, and she herself had made it so in other ways.
Betty scarcely laughed in return. It is doubtful if she heard what her sister said.
“Isn’t it horribly wet?” she said. “I was really wondering just now if it rains more here than anywhere else, or if—” and after a moment’s hesitation—“if we notice it more, Francie, because, you see, there is so little else to notice.”
Miss Morion turned quickly and glanced at her sister, forgetting that it was far too dark to discern the girl’s features. She always felt troubled when Betty spoke in that way, when her voice took that particular tone. She could be philosophical for herself far more easily than for her younger sisters.
“Well, on the other hand,” she said cheerfully, “doesn’t it show that we have no very great troubles to bear if we have leisure to think so much about small ones?”