"Don't you get up to uncle Rolf's breakfast to-morrow, aunt Lucy."
"Nor you."
"I sha'n't unless I want to--but there'll be nothing for you to do, and you must just lie still. We will all have our breakfast together when Charlton has his."
"You are the veriest sunbeam that ever came into a house," said her aunt kissing her.
Chapter XXXVIII.
My flagging soul flies under her own pitch.
Dryden.
Fleda mused as she went up stairs whether the sun were a luminous body to himself or no, feeling herself at that moment dull enough. Bright, was she, to others? nothing seemed bright to her. Every old shadow was darker than ever. Her uncle's unchanged gloom,--her aunt's unrested face,--Hugh's unaltered delicate sweet look, which always to her fancy seemed to write upon his face, "Passing away!"--and the thickening prospects whence sprang the miasm that infected the whole moral atmosphere--alas, yes!--"Money is a good thing," thought Fleda;--"and poverty need not be a bad thing, if people can take it right;--but if they take it wrong!--"
With a very drooping heart indeed she went to the window. Her old childish habit had never been forgotten; whenever the moon or the stars were abroad Fleda rarely failed to have a talk with them from her window. She stood there now, looking out into the cold still night, with eyes just dimmed with tears--not that she lacked sadness enough, but she did lack spirit enough to cry. It was very still;--after the rattle and confusion of the city streets, that extent of snow-covered country where the very shadows were motionless--the entire absence of soil and of disturbance--the rest of nature--the breathlessness of the very wind--all preached a quaint kind of sermon to Fleda. By the force of contrast they told her what should be;--and there was more yet,--she thought that by the force of example they shewed what might be. Her eyes had not long travelled over the familiar old fields and fences before she came to the conclusion that she was home in good time,--she thought she had been growing selfish, or in danger of it; and she made up her mind she was glad to be back again among the rough things of life, where she could do so much to smooth them for others and her own spirit might grow to a polish it would never gain in the regions of ease and pleasure. "To do life's work!"--thought Fleda clasping her hands,--"no matter where--and mine is here. I am glad I am in my place again--I was forgetting I had one."
It was a face of strange purity and gravity that the moon shone upon, with no power to brighten as in past days; the shadows of life were upon the child's brow. But nothing to brighten it from within? One sweet strong ray of other light suddenly found its way through the shadows and entered her heart. "The Lord reigneth! let the earth be glad!"--and then the moonbeams pouring down with equal ray upon all the unevennesses of this little world seemed to say the same thing over and over. Even so! Not less equally his providence touches all,--not less impartially his faithfulness guides. "The Lord reigneth! let the earth be glad!" There was brightness in the moonbeams now that Fleda could read this in them; she went to sleep, a very child again, with these words for her pillow.