“Thank you—yes—if you would hold the basket while I gather. These autumn flowers have not quite the brightness of the summer ones, but I think I love them more, because they remind me that winter is coming, and that I must therefore prize them doubly.”
“Ah, but we should not carry winter thoughts about us before winter comes. We should look back upon the brightness, not forward to the gloom.”
“Oh, Frank,” she replied, looking earnestly at him, with entreaty in her tearful eyes, “don’t talk of looking back upon the brightness. We are meant to look forwards, not to the gloom indeed, but beyond it, to that blessed land where there shall be no gloom and no shadows.”
He was silent.
“You asked me just now, dear Frank,” she continued, “if you could lighten my task. You could do more than that—you could take a load off my heart, if you would.”
“Indeed!” he exclaimed; “tell me how.”
“And will you take it off if I tell you?”
“Surely,” he replied; but not so warmly as she would fain have had him say it.
“You remember,” she added, “the day you dined with us a long time ago, when you asked papa about becoming an abstainer?”
“Yes; I remember it well, and that my mother would not hear of it, so, as in duty bound, I gave up all thoughts of it at once.”