He turned and looked at me in amazement. Then his arms went round me tight. "Darling," he said gently, "you're a lovely missionary—and I'm a heathen; I'm an idolater—like you—only you're my idol."
"But you believe that, don't you, Gordon?" I urged, "that—what I said? You do, don't you, Gordon?"
His eyes studied my face, and so gravely, for a moment.
"Is my wife growing alarmed about me too?" he said, half seriously; "don't be uneasy, darling—your husband's sound, all right. Only I still plead guilty to idolatry—kiss me, so I'll know you're human," he concluded, laughing.
I kissed him, and more than once. But my heart ached on.
XX
HAROLD'S SISTER—AND ANOTHER.
The next saddest thing to having no children is having only one. Parental sorrows are to be classified as follows. First, and greatest, if you haven't any; second, if you have only one. For there is no loneliness like the forlornness of a solitary bairn, to use a term of which Gordon was very fond; born to play, yet having none to play with; in need of chastening, yet denied the discipline of other children; hungry for fellowship, yet starving among its seniors. There is no desert so waste and weary as the Sahara that surrounds a solitary child.
Life has few moments of surpassing thrill and wonder. Yet there are some; and the loveliest thing about it all is this, that wealth cannot buy them, nor genius create them, nor rank command them. The impartialness of God is beautiful. A few of the superfluities do seem to be a little unevenly distributed—but the great holy luxuries of life are as freely vouchsafed the peasant as the king. The glory and the beauty of life itself; the shelter of a mother's arms and the deeper shelter of her heart; the first dismantling kiss of love; the earliest glimpse of your first-born's face—these are for the ploughman as well as the poet or the prince.
And there is another moment when life's so often tawny tide glows with the very light of heaven. It came to me and Gordon the day he led little Harold in, to look upon his sister's face. Ah, me! the tears start even yet when I recall the sacred scene. I was lying there, so weak, so happy. The slumbering babe lay beside me, gurgling now and then those mysterious sounds that a mother's heart translates so readily. I heard them coming—Harold and his father—the strong tread mingling musically with the patter of the little feet. Up the stairs they came, hand in hand along the hall, little Harold puffing with excitement, for he knew something wonderful was to be revealed. I raised my head and saw them as they entered the room.