"Grace, your memory is better about ages than about what you do not wish to hear of. And you do not wish to hear, with the common selfishness of the period, of the duty which is the most sacred of all, and at the same time the noblest privilege—the duty of self-sacrifice. What are your own little inclinations, petty conceits, and miserable jokes—jokes that are ever at deadly enmity with all deep religion—ah, what are they—you selfish and frivolous girl!—when set in the balance with a parent's life—and a parent whose life would have been in no danger but for his perfect devotion to you?"
"Aunt Patch, I never heard you speak of my father at all in that sort of way before. You generally talk of him as if he were careless, and worldly, and heterodox, most frivolous, and quite unregenerate. And now quite suddenly you find out all his value. What do you want me to do so much, Aunt Patch?"
"Don't look at me like that, child; you quite insult me. As if it could matter to me what you do—except for your own eternal welfare. If you think it the right thing to let your father die in a savage land, calling vainly for you, and buried among land-crabs without a drop of water—that is a matter for you hereafter to render your own account of. You have tired me, Grace. I am not so young as you are; and I have more feeling. I must lie down a little; you have so upset me. When you have recovered your proper frame of mind, perhaps you will kindly see that Margery has washed out the little brown teapot."
"To be sure, aunty, I am up to all her tricks. And I will just toast you a water-biscuit, and put a morsel of salt butter on it, scarcely so large as a little French bean. Go to sleep, aunty, for about an hour. I am getting into a very proper frame of mind; I can never stay very long out of it. May I go into the wood, just to think a little of my darling father's letter?"
"Yes, Grace; but not for more than half an hour, on condition that you speak to no one. You have made my head ache sadly. Leave your father's letter here."
"Oh no, if you please, let me take it with me. How can I think without it?"
Miss Patch was so sleepy that she said, "Very well; let me see it again when you have made the tea." Whereupon Grace, having beaten up the cushion of the good lady's only luxury, and laid her down softly, and kissed her forehead (for fear of having made it ache), stole her own chance for a little quiet thought, in a shelter of the woods more soft than thought. For the summer was coming with a stride of light; and bashful corners, full of lateness, tried to ease it off with moss.
In a nook of this kind, far from any path, and tenderly withdrawn into its own green rest, the lonely and bewildered girl stopped suddenly, and began to think. She drew forth the letter which had grieved her so; and she wondered that it had not grieved her more. It was not yet clear to her young frank mind that suspicion, like a mole, was at work in it. To get her thoughts better, and to feel some goodness, she sat upon a peaceful turret of new spear-grass, and spread her letter open, and began to cry. She knew that this was not at all the proper way to take things; and yet if any one had come, and preached to her, and proved it all, she could have made no other answer than to cry the more for it.
The beautiful light of the glancing day turned corners, and came round to her; the lovable joy of the many, many things which there is no time to notice, spread itself silently upon the air, or told itself only in fragrance; and the glossy young blades of grass stood up, and complacently measured their shadows.
Here lay Grace for a long sad hour, taking no heed of the things around her, however much they heeded her. The white windflower with its drooping bells, and the bluebell, and the harebell, and the pasque-flower—softest of all soft tints—likewise the delicate stitchwort, and the breath of the lingering primrose, and the white violet that outvies its sister (that sweet usurper of the coloured name) in fragrance and in purity; and hiding for its life, without any one to seek, the sensitive wood-sorrel; and, in and out, and behind them all, the cups, and the sceptres, and the balls of moss, and the shells and the combs of lichen—in the middle of the whole, this foolish maid had not one thought to throw to them. She ought to have sighed at their power of coming one after another for ever, whereas her own life was but a morning dew; but she failed to make any such reflection.