Part 30 (2/2)

”But you would enjoy the mountains. They are full of strength and rest. One hardly understands the good the hills do one. David did, looking out into them from Jerusalem. 'I will look to the hills, from whence cometh my strength.'”

”Some time,” said Desire. ”Some time I shall need the hills, and--be ready for them. But this summer--I want a good, gay, young time. I don't know why, except that I shall be just eighteen this year, and it seems as if, after that, I was going to be old. And I want to be with people I know. I _can_ be gay in the country; there is something to be gay about. But I can't dress and dance in the city.

That is all gas-light and get-up.”

”I suppose,” said Miss Craydocke, slowly, ”that our faces are all set in the way we are to go. Even if it is--” She stopped. She was thinking of one whose face had been set to go to Jerusalem. Her own words had led her to something she had not foreseen when she began.

Nothing of such suggestion came to Desire. She was in one of her rare moods of good cheer.

”I suppose so,” she said, heedlessly. And then, taking up a thought of her own suddenly,--”Miss Craydocke! Don't you think people almost always live out their names? There's Sin Scherman; there'll always be a little bit of mischief and original naughtiness in her,--with the harm taken out of it; and there's Rosamond Holabird,--they couldn't have called her anything better, if they'd waited for her to grow up; and Barb _was_ sharp; and our little Hazel is witchy and sweet and wild-woodsy; and Luclarion,--isn't that s.h.i.+ny and trumpety, and doesn't she do it? And then--there's me. I shall always be stiff and hard and unsatisfied, except in little bits of summer times that won't come often. They might as well have christened me Anxiety. I wonder why they didn't.”

”That would have been very different. There is a n.o.bleness in Desire. You will overlive the restless part,” said Miss Craydocke.

”Was there ever anything restless in your life, Miss Craydocke? And how long did it take to overlive it? It doesn't seem as if you had ever stubbed your foot against anything; and I'm _always_ stubbing.”

”My dear, I have stubbed along through fifty-six years; and the years had all three hundred and sixty-five days in them. There were chances,--don't you think so?”

”It looks easy to be old after it is done,” said Desire. ”Easy and comfortable. But to be eighteen, and to think of having to go on to be fifty-six; I beg your pardon,--but I wish it was over!”

And she drew a deep breath, heavy with the days that were to be.

”You are not to take it all at once, you know,” said Miss Craydocke.

”But I do, every now and then. I can't help it. I am sure it is the name. If they had called me 'Hapsie,' like you, I should have gone along jolly, as you do, and not minded. You see you have to _hear_ it all the time; and it tunes you up to its own key. You can't feel like a Dolly, or a Daisy, when everybody says--De-sire!”

”I don't know how I came to be called 'Hapsie,'” said Miss Craydocke. ”Somebody who liked me took it up, and it seemed to get fitted on. But that wasn't when I was young.”

”What was it, then?” asked Desire, with a movement of interest.

”Keren-happuch,” said Miss Craydocke, meekly. ”My father named me, and he always called me so,--the whole of it. He was a severe, Old-Testament man, and _his_ name was Job.”

Desire was more than half right, after all. There was a good deal of Miss Craydocke's story hinted in those few words and those two ancient names.

”But I turned into 'Miss Craydocke' pretty soon, and settled down. I suppose it was very natural that I should,” said the sweet old maid, serenely.

XVII.

QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS.

The evening train came in through the little bend in the edge of the woods, and across the bridge over the pretty rapids, and slid to its stopping-place under the high arches of the other bridge that connected the main street of Z---- with its continuation through ”And.”

There were lights twinkling in the shops, where they were making change, and weighing out tea and sugar, and measuring calico, although outside it was not yet quite dark.

The train was half an hour late; there had been a stoppage at some draw or crossing near the city.

Mr. Prendible was there, to see if his lodgers were come, and to get his evening paper; the platform was full of people. Old Z---- acquaintances, many of them, whom Desire and her mother were pleased, and Helena excited to see.

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