"Lor, bless you! I know. A bit scared of 'em, eh? You wait till you've had eight on 'em like me. Then a bairn's neither here nor there as the saying goes. Ah've got six an' buried two, dearie me, but Ivy's in service now, so I'm not complaining. The Lord's will be done, as I says to Mrs. Dalton, who's had fourteen. The Lord's will be done so long as He don't overdo it."
"Of course," smiled Muriel shyly, feeling somehow that the answer was inadequate.
Was that really the end of it all? Six alive and two buried, and the Lord's will being done, while one's face grew florid and coarse, with a network of purplish veins across the cheek, and days and nights passed in an endless race to keep abreast with small domestic duties?
Life's not like that. Life's not like that, vowed Muriel. Fiercely she fought this sense of inexorable doom for the salvation of her dreams. Surely God made the world most beautiful, and set within it to delight man's heart music, and lingering scents, and the clear light of dawn through leafless trees. To teach man the holiness of law, He set the stars to ride their courses; for patience, He showed the slow fertility of earth; for wisdom, He granted an eternal hunger that would snatch its secret from the lightning, and their riddle from the tombs of ancient men. He gave man beauty of body, and delight in swift, free, movement. He gave him friendship, and the joy of service. And, lest these things should be too sweet, and cloy with sweetness, He gave him danger, that man might know the glory of adventure. And, lest man should grow weary in his wandering, God gave the last and deepest mercy, Death.
Not quite in definite words, Muriel thought this, but somehow her heart told her that Life was this joyous, regal journey. She was grown up. The whole world lay before her. The great adventure, which just must end right, was about to begin.
She raised her hand to feel the long plait falling between her narrow shoulders. Soon there would be a cold feeling at the back of her neck. Her hair would be twisted up below her hat. Did being grown up really make such a difference?
The train jerked on. Beyond the window the flat, dun country slid past wearily. Hot July fields, ripening into dusty yellow for the harvest, paddocks dried to rusted fawn, hundreds and hundreds of allotments, variegated as a patchwork quilt, speckled with crazy tool sheds, seamed with straight dykes, splashed here and there with the silver-green of cabbages, or the faded motley of a wilted border of July flowers—this was the country that surrounded Marshington. After the ringing splendor of the wind-swept wolds, the stale flatness of the plain seemed doubly depressing.
But Muriel was not depressed. Marshington to her was not a select residential suburb of Kingsport, compensating for its ugliness by its respectability. It was the threshold of life, the gateway to a brimming, lovely world, whence she might start upon a thousand strange adventures. Its raw, red villas were transfigured. Its gardens glowed to meet her. When she could see from the right-hand window the elm-crowned hill of Miller's Rise, her excitement almost choked her.
She leaned back in her seat, half wishing that she need never rise, but Connie darted to the window.
"I say, Mu, hadn't we better pull the bags down? Look out! There's your tennis racket. Where's my book box? My book box, Mu? Good-bye, Tommie, bye-bye! See, Muriel, he's ta-ing his little hand at us! Isn't he an angel? Oh, there's Father! Cooee, father, cooee! We're here! We're here!"