Part 60 (1/2)
”And pride?” said the old lady.
”Why do you ask me?”
”You're so bonny, my darling. You ken you are; and other folks know it.”
”Pride? Yes, it tempted me a little,” I said; ”but it could not for long, Miss Cardigan, when I remembered.”
”Remembered? What was it you remembered?” she said very tenderly; for I believe my eyes had filled again.
”When I remembered what I was heir to.”
”And ye didn't have your inheritance all in the future, I trust?” said my old friend. ”There's crumbs to be gotten even now from that feast; ye didn't go starving, my bairn?”
”I hadn't much to help me, Miss Cardigan, except the Lord's wonderful world which He has made. That helped me.”
”And ye had a crumb of joy now and then?”
”I had more than crumbs sometimes,” I said, with a sober looking back over the years.
”And it is my own living Daisy and not an image of her? You are not spoiled a bit, my bairn?”
”Maybe I am,” I said, smiling at her. ”How do I know?”
”There's a look in your eyes which says you are not,” she said with a sort of long breath; ”and I know not how you have escaped it. Child! the forces which have a.s.sailed you have beaten down many a one. It's only to be strong in the Lord, to be sure; but we are lured away from our strength, sometimes, and then we fall; and we are lured easily.”
”Perhaps not when the battle is so very hard to fight, dear Miss Cardigan.”
”Maybe no,” she said. ”But had ye never a minister to counsel ye or to help ye, in those parts?”
”Only when I was in Palestine; nowhere else.”
”You must have wanted it sorely.”
”Yes, but, Miss Cardigan, I had better teaching all the time.
The mountains and the sun and the sky and the beauty, all seemed to repeat the Bible to me, all the time. I never saw the top of Mont Blanc rosy in the sunset, nor the other mountains, without thinking of those words, 'Be ye perfect, even as your Father in heaven is perfect;' - and, 'They shall walk with me in white.' -”
Miss Cardigan wiped away a tear or two.
”But you are looking very sober, my love,” she said presently, examining me.
”I have reason,” I said. And I went on to give her in detail the account of the past year's doings in my family, and of our present position and prospects. She listened with the greatest sympathy and the most absorbed attention. The story had taken a good while; it was growing late, and I rose to go. Not till then was her nephew alluded to.
”I'm thinking,” then said Miss Cardigan slowly, ”there's one person you have not asked after, who would ill like to be left out of our mouths.”
I stood still and hesitated and I felt my face grow warm.
”I have not heard from him, Miss Cardigan, since -”
And I did not say since when.