"Changes come to everybody, I suppose, mamma, now and then."
"Is that all your boasted religion is good for?"
I could not answer. Was it? What is the boat which can only sail in smooth water? But though feeling reproached, and justly, I was as far from help as ever. Mamma went on -
"You used to be always bright - with your sort of brightness; there was not much brilliance to it; but you had a kind of steady cheerfulness of your own, from a child. What has become of it?"
"Mamma, I am sorry it is gone. Perhaps it will wake up one of these days."
"I shall die of heartache first. It would be the easiest thing
I could do. To live here, is to die a long death. I feel as if
I could not get a free breath now."
"I think, mamma, when we get accustomed to the place, we shall find pleasantness in it. It is a world pleasanter than New York."
"No, it is not," said mamma vehemently; "and it never will be. In a city, you can cover yourself up, as it were, and half hide yourself from even yourself; in such a place as this, there is not a line in your lot but you have; leisure to trace it all out; and there is not a rough place in your life but you have time to put your foot on every separate inch of it. Life is bare, Daisy; in a city one lives faster, and one is in a crowd, and things are covered up or one passes them over somehow. I shall die here!"
"Next spring you can have Melbourne again, mamma, you know."
But mamma burst into tears. I knew not how to comfort.