Part 21 (1/2)

He had left his question, as their talk went on, meaning to ask it again before they separated. He thought it was prevailing with her, and that the help that comes of helping others would reach her need; it was for her sake he asked it; he was disappointed at the sudden, almost trivial turn she gave it.

”You have taken up another a.n.a.logy, Miss Desire,” he said. ”We were talking about crumbs and feeding. The five loaves and the five thousand. 'Why reason ye because ye have no bread? How is it that ye do not understand?'”

Kenneth quoted these words naturally, pleasantly; as he might quote anything that had been spoken to them both out of a love and authority they both recognized, a little while ago.

But Desire was suddenly sharp and fractious. If it had not touched some deep, live place in her, she would not have minded so much. It was partly, too, the coming toward home. She had got away out of the pure, clear s.p.a.ces where such things seemed to be fit and unstrained, into the edge of her earth atmosphere again, where, falling, they took fire. Presently she would be in that ridiculous pink room, and Glossy Megilp would be chattering about ”those lovely purple poppies with the black gra.s.s,” that she had been lamenting all the morning she had not bought for her chip hat, instead of the pomegranate flowers. And Agatha would be on the bed, in her cashmere sack, reading Miss Braddon.

”It would sound nice to tell them she was going down to the Mission School to give out crumbs!”

Besides, I suppose that persons of a certain temperament never utter a more ungracious ”No,” than when they are longing all the time to say ”Yes.”

So she turned round on the lower step to Kenneth, when he had asked that grave, sweet question of the Lord's, and said perversely,--

”I thought you did not believe in any brokering kind of business.

It's all there,--for everybody. Why should I set up to fetch and carry?”

She did not look in his face as she said it; she was not audacious enough to do that; she poked with the stick of her sunshade between the uneven bricks of the sidewalk, keeping her eyes down, as if she watched for some truth she expected to pry up. But she only wedged the stick in so that she could not get it out; and Kenneth Kincaid making her absolutely no answer at all, she had to stand there, growing red and ashamed, held fast by her own silly trap.

”Take care; you will break it,” said Kenneth, quietly, as she gave it a twist and a wrench. And he put out his hand, and took it from hers, and drew gently upward in the line in which she had thrust it in.

”You were bearing off at an angle. It wanted a straight pull.”

”I never pull straight at anything. I always get into a crook, somehow. You didn't answer me, Mr. Kincaid. I didn't mean to be rude--or wicked. I didn't mean--”

”What you said. I know that; and it's no use to answer what people don't mean. That makes the crookedest crook of all.”

”But I think I did mean it partly; only not contrarimindedly. I do mean that I have no business--yet awhile. It would only be--Migging at gospel!”

And with this remarkable application of her favorite ill.u.s.trative expression, she made a friendly but abrupt motion of leave-taking, and went into the house.

Up into her own room, in the third story, where the old furniture was, and no ”fadging,”--and sat down, bonnet, gloves, sunshade, and all, in her little cane rocking-chair by the window.

Helena was down in the pink room, listening with charmed ears to the grown up young-ladyisms of her elder sisters and Glossy Megilp.

Desire sat still until the dinner-bell rang, forgetful of her dress, forgetful of all but one thought that she spoke out as she rose at last at the summons to take off her things in a hurry,--

”I wonder,--I _wonder_--if I shall ever live anything all straight out!”

XIII.

PIECES OF WORLDS.

Mr. d.i.c.kens never put a truer thought into any book, than he put at the beginning of ”Little Dorrit.”

That, from over land and sea, from hundreds, thousands of miles away, are coming the people with whom we are to have to do in our lives; and that, ”what is set to us to do to them, and what is set for them to do to us, will all be done.”

Not only from far places in this earth, over land and sea,--but from out the eternities, before and after,--from which souls are born, and into which they die,--all the lines of life are moving continually which are to meet and join, and bend, and cross our own.