A few days later I was sitting alone, and had a long fit of musing over the many new thoughts that were crowding into my mind, as yet too childish to master them, when Edmund came in, and I saw he had been weeping. He said nothing at first, and made believe he was reading; but I could see tears trickling down through his fingers as he covered his face with his hands. Presently he looked up and cried out,
"Cousin Constance, Jack is going away from us."
"And if it please God, not for a long time," I answered; for it grieved me to see him sad.
"Nay, but he is going for many years, I fear," Edmund said. "My uncle, Jean de Luc, has asked for him to be brought up in his house at La Rochelle. He is his godfather, and has a great store of money, which he says he will leave to Jack. Alack! cousin Constance, I would that there was no such thing in the world as money, and no such country as France. I wish we were all dead." And then he fell to weeping again very bitterly.
I told him in a childish manner what my mother was wont to say to me when any little trouble fell to my lot—that we should be patient, and offer up our sufferings to God.
"But I can do nothing now for Jack," he cried. "It was my first thought at waking and my last at night, how to please the dear urchin; but now 'tis all over."
"Oh, but Edmund," I cried, "an if you were to be as good as the blessed saints in heaven, you could do a great deal for Jack."
"How so, cousin Constance?" he asked, not comprehending my meaning; and thereupon I answered:
"When once I said to my sweet mother, 'It grieves me, dear heart, that I can give thee nothing, who gives me so much,' she bade me take heed that every prayer we say, every good work we do, howsoever imperfect, and every pain we suffer, may be offered up for those we love; and so out of poverty, and weakness, and sorrow, we have wherewith to make precious and costly and cheerful gifts."
I spoke as a child, repeating what I had heard; but he listened not as a child. A sudden light came into his eyes, and methinks his good angel showed him in that hour more than my poor lips could utter.