but believing was more than seeing: though nothing is too good to be true, many things are too good to be grasped.
"Poor misbelieving birds of God," he said to himself, "we hover about a whole wood of the trees of life, venturing only here and there a peck, as if their fruit might be poison, and the design of our creation was our ruin! we shake our wise, owl-feathered heads, and declare they cannot be the trees of life: that were too good to be true! Ten times more consistent are they who deny there is a God at all, than they who believe in a middling kind of God—except indeed that they place in him a fitting faith!"
The thoughts rose gently in his full heart, as the flowers, one after the other, stole in at his eyes, looking up from the dark earth like the spirits of its hidden jewels, which themselves could not reach the sun, exhaled in longing. Over grass which fondled his feet like the lap of an old nurse, he walked slowly round the bed of the roses, turning again towards the house. But there, half-way between him and it, was the lady of the garden descending to meet him!—not ancient like the garden, but young like its flowers, light-footed, and full of life.
Prepared by her brother to be friendly, she met him with a pleasant smile, and he saw that the light which shone in her dark eyes had in it rays of laughter. She had a dark, yet clear complexion, a good forehead, a nose after no recognized generation of noses, yet an attractive one, a mouth larger than to human judgment might have seemed necessary, yet a right pleasing mouth, with two rows of lovely teeth. All this Donal saw approach without dismay. He was no more shy with women than with men; while none the less his feeling towards them partook largely of the reverence of the ideal knight errant. He would not indeed have been shy in the presence of an angel of God; for his only courage came of truth, and clothed in the dignity of his reverence, he could look in the face of the lovely without perturbation. He would not have sought to hide from him whose voice was in the garden, but would have made haste to cast himself at his feet.
Bonnet in hand he advanced to meet Kate Graeme. She held out to him a well-shaped, good-sized hand, not ignorant of work—capable indeed of milking a cow to the cow's satisfaction. Then he saw that her chin was strong, and her dark hair not too tidy; that she was rather tall, and slenderly conceived though plumply carried out. Her light approach pleased him. He liked the way her foot pressed the grass. If Donal loved anything in the green world, it was neither roses nor hollyhocks, nor even sweet peas, but the grass that is trodden under foot, that springs in all waste places, and has so often to be glad of the dews of heaven to heal the hot cut of the scythe. He had long abjured the notion of anything in the vegetable kingdom being without some sense of life, without pleasure and pain also, in mild form and degree.
CHAPTER XXI.
A FIRST MEETING
He took her hand, and felt it an honest one—a safe, comfortable hand.
"My brother told me he had brought you," she said. "I am glad to see you."
"You are very kind," said Donal. "How did either of you know of my existence? A few minutes back, I was not aware of yours."
Was it a rude utterance? He was silent a moment with the silence that promises speech, then added—
"Has it ever struck you how many born friends there are in the world who never meet—persons to love each other at first sight, but who never in this world have that sight?"
"No," returned Miss Graeme, with a merrier laugh than quite responded to the remark, "I certainly never had such a thought. I take the people that come, and never think of those who do not. But of course it must be so."
"To be in the world is to have a great many brothers and sisters you do not know!" said Donal.
"My mother told me," she rejoined, "of a man who had had so many wives and children that his son, whom she had met, positively did not know all his brothers and sisters."
"I suspect," said Donal, "we have to know our brothers and sisters."
"I do not understand."
"We have even got to feel a man is our brother the moment we see him," pursued Donal, enhancing his former remark.
"That sounds alarming!" said Miss Graeme, with another laugh. "My little heart feels not large enough to receive so many."
"The worst of it is," continued Donal, who once started was not ready to draw rein, "that those who chiefly advocate this extension of the family bonds, begin by loving their own immediate relations less than anybody else. Extension with them means slackening—as if any one could learn to love more by loving less, or go on to do better without doing well! He who loves his own little will not love others much."
"But how can we love those who are nothing to us?" objected Miss Graeme.
"That would be impossible. The family relations are for the sake of developing a love rooted in a far deeper though less recognized relation.—But I beg your pardon, Miss Graeme. Little Davie alone is my pupil, and I forget myself."
"I am very glad to listen to you," returned Miss Graeme. "I cannot say I am prepared to agree with you. But it is something, in this out-of-the-way corner, to hear talk from which it is even worth while to differ."
"Ah, you can have that here if you will!"
"Indeed!"
"I mean talk from which you would probably differ. There is an old man in the town who can talk better than ever I heard man before. But he is a poor man, with a despised handicraft, and none heed him. No community recognizes its great men till they are gone."
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