Tears hung on Blanch's long eyelashes. "Think of all the blessed open church-doors," she said. "It makes me homesick. I want to go to mass. Even a fiddling, frescoed, full-dress mass would be better than none."
I quoted my friend, Sir Boyle Roche, "'Can a man be like a bird, in two places at once?' Besides, little one, if you were in town, it is not unlikely that you might stay at home all day because your new hat was not becoming, or because of the hot sun, or the east wind, or the mud, or the dust."
The dear child blushed. "But then one likes to know that one can go," she said meekly.
Sally and her husband were going five miles to meeting that day. They started early; and we watched them go soberly off in single file till the trees hid first the large brim of Sally's preposterous bonnet, then the crown of Mr. Smith's antique hat. Then we went in and prepared a little altar, with a statuette of the Virgin, a crucifix, candles and flowers, and, lifting up our hearts in that wild solitude, assisted at some far-away mass. There was no interruption, only a group of deer stood without, at the distance of a stone's throw, as motionless as gray marble statues, and watched us with soft, intent eyes. After we had got through and were sitting silently, the candles still burning, some Roman Catholic hummingbirds dashed in and sucked the honey out of the wild roses we had given our Lady, but left a sweet thought instead. When the buzz of their wings was gone, we heard robins and a bobolink outside, and a chorus of little twitterers singing a Laudate. "Amen!" said Blanch. The unclouded sunlight steeped the surrounding forest in sultry splendor, and clouds of perfume rose, like incense, from pine, and fir, and hemlock, from thousands of little blossoms, from plots of red and white clover, heavy with honey, from censers of anemones, and, threading all these sweets of sound, perfume, and sight together, was the bubbling voice of a brook murmuring Paters and Aves over its pebbles.
Blanch smiled, and repeated softly:
"The waters all over the earth rejoice
In many a hushed and silvery voice;
'In Jordan we covered Him, foot and crown,
While the dove of the Spirit came fluttering down.
"'We steadied his keel at the crowded beach,
When the multitude gathered to hear him teach;
The feet of our Master we smoothly bore,
And he walked the sea as a paven floor.
"'When the tempest lashed each foamy crest,
At his 'Peace, be still!' we sank to rest.
And we laughed into wine, when he came to see
The marriage in Cana of Galilee.'
"The stars that fade in the growing day
Have each a tremulous word to say;
'We sang, we sang, as we hung above
The lowly cradle of Infinite Love.'