“And is this bread upon the water, Molly?” he asked, infinitely satisfied to lie smiling at the two women who loved him. “I ate your crusts, and now you come and turn other crusts into milk-toast for me!”
“But don’t you remember?”
He faintly shook his head. It was long ago forgotten, the little-boy kindness and loyalty, in the days of warts and freckles, cinnamon sticks and skate-keys, tears that were smeared into dirty faces, long incomprehensibly boring days in chalk and ink-scented schoolrooms, long blissful vacation forenoons dreaming under bridges, idling in the sweet dimness of old barns. There had been a little passionate Molly, alternately satisfactory and naughty, tearing aprons and planning Indian encampments, generous with cookies and taffies, exacting and jealous, marvellous, maddening, and always to be protected and admired. But she was a dim, hazy long-ago memory, merged now into the handsome, brilliant woman whose fine hand held his.
“He used to fill his little pockets with them, Cassie. I can remember passing them to him, under the table.”
“Our Tom is like that,” Cassie nodded.
“Think of your remembering—” Tim murmured contentedly.
He did not, but then it did not matter. It was Christmas morning, the restless dark night was over. Sun was shining outdoors on the new snow. His adored boys were happy, and the baby was asleep, and Cassie, instead of showing the long strain and anxiety, looked absolutely blooming as she smiled at him. Best of all, here was Molly, back in his life again, and talking of teaching the boys swimming, down at beloved old Beachaways. He had always thought, when he was a little boy, that no felicity in heaven or earth equalled a supper on the shore at Beachaways. The grown-ups of those days must have been hard, indeed, thought Tim mildly, drifting off to sleep, for he could remember begging for the joy of taking sandwiches down there, and being coldly and, unreasonably—he could see now—refused. Well, it would be different with his kids. They could be pirates, smugglers, beachcombers, whale fishers, anything they pleased. They could build driftwood fires and cook potatoes and toast bread——
“Crusts, hey?” he said drowsily. “Bread upon the waters.”
“Bread is oddly symbolical anyway, isn’t it, Molly?” Cassie said, in her quiet, restful voice. “Bread upon the waters, and the breaking of bread, and giving the children stones when they ask for bread! Even the solemnest words of all—‘Do this in commemoration’—are of bread.”
“Perhaps there is something we don’t understand about it,” Molly answered very softly. “The real sacrament of love—the essence of all religion and all sacraments.”