Part 20 (1/2)

”I must go,” she said, starting up; yet when she got to the door, she paused and delayed.

The voices were talking on, in the study; somehow, Desire had last words also, to say to Mrs. Froke.

She was partly shy about going past that open door, and partly afraid they might not notice her if she did. Back in her girlish thought was a secret suggestion that she was pus.h.i.+ng at all the time with a certain self-scorn and denial, that it might happen that she and Kenneth Kincaid would go out at the same moment; if so, he would walk up the street with her, and Kenneth Kincaid was one of the few persons whom Desire Ledwith thoroughly believed in and liked. ”There was no Mig about him,” she said. It is hazardous when a girl of seventeen makes one of her rare exceptions in her estimate of character in favor of a man of six and twenty.

Yet Desire Ledwith hated ”nonsense;” she wouldn't have anybody sending her bouquets as they did to Agatha and Florence; she had an utter contempt for lavender pantaloons and waxed moustaches; but for Kenneth Kincaid, with his honest, clear look at life, and his high strong purpose, to say friendly things,--tell her a little now and then of how the world looked to him and what it demanded,--this lifted her up; this made it seem worth while to speak and to hear.

So she was very glad when Uncle t.i.tus saw her go down the hall, after she had made up her mind that that way lay her straight path, and that things contrived were not things worth happening,--and spoke out her name, so that she had to stop, and turn to the open doorway and reply; and Kenneth Kincaid came over and held out his hand to her. He had two books in the other,--a volume of Bunsen and a copy of ”Guild Court,”--and he was just ready to go.

”Not been to church to-day?” said Uncle t.i.tus to Desire.

”I've been--to Friend's Meeting,” the girl answered.

”Get anything by that?” he asked, gruffly, letting the s.h.a.g down over his eyes that behind it beamed softly.

”Yes; a morsel,” replied Desire. ”All I wanted.”

”All you wanted? Well, that's a Sunday-full!”

”Yes, sir, I think it is,” said she.

When they got out upon the sidewalk, Kenneth Kincaid asked, ”Was it one of the morsels that may be shared, Miss Desire? Some crumbs multiply by dividing, you know.”

”It was only a verse out of the Bible, with a new word in it.”

”A new word? Well, I think Bible verses often have that. I suppose it was what they were made for.”

Desire's glance at him had a question in it.

”Made to look different at different times, as everything does that has life in it. Isn't that true? Clouds, trees, faces,--do they ever look twice the same?”

”Yes,” said Desire, thinking especially of the faces. ”I think they do, or ought to. But they may look _more_.”

”I didn't say _contradictory_. To look more, there must be a difference; a fresh aspect. And that is what the world is full of; and the world is the word of G.o.d.”

”The world?” said Desire, who had been taught in a dried up, mechanical sort of way, that the Bible is the word of G.o.d; and practically left to infer that, that point once settled, it might be safely shut, up between its covers and not much meddled with, certainly not over freely interpreted.

”Yes. What G.o.d had to say. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was G.o.d. Without him was not anything made that was made.”

Desire's face brightened. She knew those words by heart. They were the first Sunday-school lesson she ever committed to memory, out of the New Testament; ”down to 'grace and truth,'” as she recollected.

What a jumble of repet.i.tions it had been to her, then! Sentences so much alike that she could not remember them apart, or which way they came. All at once the simple, beautiful meaning was given to her.

_What G.o.d had to say._

And it took a world,--millions, of worlds,--to say it with.

”And the Bible, too?” she said, simply following out her own mental perception, without giving the link. It was not needed. They were upon one track.

”Yes; all things; and all _souls_. The world-word comes through things; the Bible came through souls. And it is all the more alive, and full, and deep, and changing; like a river.”

”Living fountains of waters! that was part of the morsel to-day,”