"I shall try to do my duty by Dora," she said rather coldly. "But what does 'full authority' mean?"
"She is too young to learn theology," he replied; "but everything else is free. I spoke lest some one might interfere during my absence, though that isn't likely."
Margaret waited a moment, then said, "Dora tells me that you hear her say the Our Father every night and morning. Of course, I shall hear it when you are gone. If you are willing, I would like to teach her to bless herself before praying, and to say a little prayer to the Mother of Christ for your safety. I won't make her say 'Mother of God.'"
Mr. Granger was touched. "That cannot hurt her nor me," he said. "Do as you please."
Presently he spoke again, "I received yesterday a letter which my cousin Sinclair wrote me the day before he was killed. It was given to a soldier who was taken prisoner, and is only just exchanged. That letter surprised and affected me; and if I had a lingering doubt as to my own course, it was dispelled then. He was driving to the steamer, it seems, when he met the Seventh Regiment marching through Broadway to take the cars south. As they marched, they sang 'Glory Hallelujah' with a sound like a torrent. He was electrified. There he was on the point of going abroad for distraction when here at home was the centre toward which the eyes of the whole civilized world were turned. He blushed for the slothful ease and aimlessness of his life. Here was manly employment. He took no thought for the causes of the war, since he was not responsible for them; and circumstances had decided which side he was to take. To him it was a great gymnasium in which men enervated by wealth, or cramped by petty aims, were to wake up their nobler powers, string anew their courage, 'ventilate their souls,' as he expressed it, and, finding what they were themselves capable of achieving, take back thus their faith in others. When he saw those gallant fellows march singing off to battle, the dusty, stale old life broke open for him, and a new golden age bloomed out. He did not feel that they were rejoicing over the shedding of blood, or the winning of victories; but they sang their emancipation from littleness, they sang because they caught breath of a higher air, they sang because they had found out that their souls were greater than their bodies. Then first it seemed credible to him that the Son of God took flesh and died for man; for then he first perceived that man at his best is a glorious creature. 'I am happy,' he added. 'It is like getting out of a close room into the fresh air. I am going through a picture-gallery more magnificent than any in the old world, and listening to strains of an epic grander than Homer's. I feel as if I were just made new.'"
This recital was to Margaret like some reviving essence to a fainting person. Her heart, drooping inward on itself, expanded again.
"If I knew him now!" she said. "If he would-come to me now!"
"Here is something that will interest you," Mr. Granger added; "I will read it from the letter."
He lighted the gas and read: "The last time I was in Washington, I went to see Lieut. A——, who is laid up in one of the hospitals in charge of the Sisters of Charity. Everything was quiet and orderly. A. was enthusiastic about the sisters, calls them doves of peace and charity, says their bonnets look like wings of great white birds. I talked with one of them when I went out.
"'How can you, who are the children of peace, bear to come among us who are the sons of strife?' I asked.