I knew
she saw it working in my face. I attempted to apologize for my
preference, but she did not understand me; so I blurted out my thought,
awkwardly enough, saying,--
"Yours are beautiful; but God made these, you know,--and--and--I like
them best."
She looked down upon me gravely, pityingly, smiling, too, with a
tenderness which was neither grave nor pitying. I have seen
long-visioned people look with just that expression at the eyes of the
short-sighted, on the latter's confessing their inability to detect an
object at no great distance.
"_He made them all_," she said; and her words were an ascription of
praise.
They come to me often now. They bid me look farther and see more. They
tell me how _mine_ and _thine_ have no place in this world of _His_.
False distinctions shrink away from the light of the old woman's clearer
faith; I see how the ablest workers are but instruments in higher
hands,--how science, culture, inspiration itself, are but gifts to be
laid on His altar.
I need scarcely say that I at once found room for Ann's flowers in my
hand, as for her lesson in my heart. Some of the former are pressed and
laid away as a sacred memento, and something of the latter is treasured
up among good seed sown by the way-side.
I would gladly have lingered longer in this little nook, into which I
seemed to have been drifted by chance; but my time was up,--I had a mile
or two to walk over the fields in the direction of the railway,--my
friends were to meet me at Stratford.
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