“I can’t cry!” she whispered, and her voice sounded hard.
So, after a space, I said, “Then, dear, I think I will have to make you laugh.”
“Laugh, Mary?”
“Yes-I will tell you about the quarrel between Aunt Varina and myself. You know what times we’ve been having-how I shocked the poor lady?”
She was looking at me, but her eyes were not seeing me. “Yes, Mary,” she said, in the same dead tone.
“Well, that was a game we made for you. It was very funny!”
“Funny?”
“Yes! Because I really did shock her-though we started out just to give you something else to think about!”
And then suddenly I saw the healing tears begin to come. She could not weep for her own grief-but she could weep because of what she knew we two had had to suffer for her!
21. I went out and told the others what I had done; and Mrs. Tuis rushed in to her niece and they wept in each other’s arms, and Mrs. Tuis explained all the mysteries of life by her formula, “the will of the Lord.”