'He satisfieth thy mouth with good things, so that thy youth is renewed like the eagle's.'"
The voice came like an oracle, and was listened to with somewhat of the same silent reverence. But after that pause Mr. Lenox remarked that he never understood that comparison. What was it about an eagle's youth?
"Why," said Lois, "an eagle never grows old!"
"Is that it! But I wish you would go on a little further, Miss Lothrop. You spoke of hymn-writers having a different standpoint, and of their words as more cheerful than the utterances of other poets. Do you know, I had never thought other poets were not cheerful, until now; and I certainly never got the notion that hymns were an enlivening sort of literature. I thought they dealt with the shadowy side of life almost exclusively."
"Well—yes, perhaps they do," said Lois; "but they go kindling beacons everywhere to light it up; and it is the beacons you see, and not the darkness. Now the secular poets turn that about. They deal with the brightest things they can find; but, to change the figure, they cannot keep the minor chord out of their music."
Mr. and Mrs. Lenox looked at each other.
"Do you mean to say," said the latter, "that the hymn-writers do not use the minor key? They write in it, or they sing in it, more properly, altogether!"
"Yes," said Lois, into whose cheeks a slight colour was mounting; "yes, perhaps; but it is with the blast of the trumpet and the clash of the cymbals of triumph. There may be the confession of pain, but the cry of victory is there too!"
"Victory—over what?" said Mrs. Lenox rather scornfully,
"Over pain, for one thing," said Lois; "and over loss, and weariness, and disappointment."