No end and no beginning, whilst the timeless æons run.
David came home after his month’s holiday as hard and healthy as a man may be. Elizabeth was well content. She and David were friends. He liked her company, he ate and slept, he was well, and he laughed sometimes as the old David had laughed.
“Don’t you think your master looks well, Mrs. Havergill?” she said quite gaily.
Mrs. Havergill sighed.
“He do look well,” she admitted; “but there, ma’am, there’s no saying—it isn’t looks as we can go by. In my own family now, there was my sister Sarah. She was a fine, fresh-looking woman. Old Dr. Jones he met her out walking, as it might be on the Thursday.
“‘Well, Miss Sarah, you do look well,’ he says—and there, ’tweren’t but the following Tuesday as she was took. ‘Who’d ha’ thought it,’ he says. ‘In the midst of life we are in death,’ and that’s a true word. And my brother ’Enry now, ’e never look so well in all ’is life as when he was laying in ’is coffin.”
Elizabeth could afford to laugh.
“Oh, Mrs. Havergill, do be cheerful,” she implored; “it would be so much better for you.”
Mrs. Havergill looked injured.
“I don’t see as we’re sent into this world to be cheerful,” she said, with the air of one who reproves unchristian levity.