Evelyn Whitaker

“ Mr Robins had never been so kind and cheerful, quite amusing, laughing at her mistakes, and allowing her to play just the things she knew best, and to get up in the middle of the lesson to go to the window and see a long procession of gypsy vans going by to Smithurst fair.
It was such a very beautiful day; perhaps it was this that produced such a good effect on the organist's temper. There had been a frost that morning, but it was not enough to strip the trees, but only to turn the elms a richer gold, and the beeches a warmer red, and the oaks a ruddier brown ”

“ The old woman shivered and drew her damp shawl round her, and longed, oh, how bitterly, for the old fireside, and the settle, worn and polished by generations of shoulders; for the arm-chair with its patchwork cushions; longed, ah, how wearily, for the grave by the churchyard wall, where the master rests free of all his troubles, and where "there's plenty of room for I;" and longed, too, quite as simply and pathetically, for a cup of tea out of the cracked brown teapot. But why should I dwell on the feelings of a foolish, insignificant old woman? ”

“ But the flame of life burns quicker and fiercer in London than at Downside, for that same girl, coming back after only five years in London, was so changed and aged and altered that—though, to be sure, she came in the dusk and was muffled up in a big shawl—no one recognised her, or thought for a moment of pretty, coquettish, well-dressed Edith Robins, when the weary, shabby-looking woman passed them by. ”

“ It is evening too; surely the sun of this world is getting near its setting, and casting long shadows, if we would but see them. Shall we send these poor souls away fasting?—these women and little children? Will they not faint by the way? How can they hope to reach their heavenly home without the Bread of Life?
But the Lord is looking on them with the same infinite compassion, and He is saying to me and to you, "Give ye them to eat." Is there not here this evening, among you Martel people, a lad with five barley loaves and two small fishes for the Lord's use? ”

“ She fell back against the trunk of the yew-tree as if he had struck her, and the movement caused the baby to wake and cry, and the sound of its little wailing voice followed him as he walked down the path and out into the road, and he could hear it still when he reached his own garden gate, where through the open door the light shone out from the lamp that Jane Sands was just carrying into his room, where his supper was spread and his armchair and slippers awaited him. ”

“ John, however, whose eyes were not full of tears, saw an ominous quivering about the little angel's under lip, and an anxious feeling of knitted gloves around the "dear, darling little hole," as if the penny might yet be recovered, and as if the giver had not realized the fatal and irretrievable nature of putting into a missionary-box. The full sense of her loss at last overwhelmed her, and she burst into uncontrollable grief, "I wants my penny" being the burden of the tale. ”

“ It nearly broke her father's heart; it made an old man of him and turned his hair white, and it seemed to freeze or petrify all his kindliness and human sympathy.
He was a proud, reserved man, and could not bear the pity that every one felt for him, or endure the well-meant but injudicious condolences, mixed with 'I told you so,' and 'I 've thought for a long time,' which the neighbours were so liberal with. Even Mr Clifford's attempts at consolation he could hardly bring himself to listen to courteously, and Jane Sands' tearful eyes and quivering voice irritated him beyond all endurance. ”

“ There is but one power can open the close-sealed lips of such a nature, and that is when the angel takes a live coal from the great Altar of love and lays it on his mouth; and then he speaks, and with a power wanting in the glib outpourings of a shallower nature. And so John Rossitter found himself speaking words of comfort to Miss Toosey, which seemed like a new language to his unaccustomed lips; telling her how small, how poor everything earthly is in God's sight, and yet how nothing is too small, nothing too poor for the good Lord's notice ”

“ For after all those clothes had actually gone to some other baby. Well! well! it is a selfish world after all, and each of us has his own interests which take him up and engross him. No doubt this little common child at Stokeley was all in all to Jane Sands, and she was glad enough of a chance to pick all the best out of those baby clothes up-stairs that he remembered his young wife preparing so lovingly for her baby and his. It gave him quite a pang to think of some little Sands or Jenkins adorned with these tucks he had seen run so carefully and frills sewn so daintily. ”

“ You see, Miss Toosey was not critical, and she had not been to any other church for many years, and custom draws a soft curtain over imperfections, and reverence is not quick to see irreverence in others, and prayer fills the air with clouds of incense through which we cannot easily see bonnets, but only Heaven itself; and as Miss Toosey knelt, being very short, you remember, and the pews high she could only with her outward eyes see the angels in the roof and her prayer-book. ”

“ He had evidently given Jane credit for a great deal more unselfishness and devotion to him and his than she really felt, for she had all the time been busy working and providing for her own people, when he had thought she was full of consideration for Edith's child. Pshaw! he had to pull himself together and take himself to task. For even in these few days he had grown to think of that little brown-faced, dark-eyed baby as his grandchild, instead of Martin Blake's brat. ”

“ But, no, that would not do either; and the old woman roused herself and shook off the faintness. "Whatever would folks say if Laddie's mother was found dead like any tramp in the road? He'd die of shame, pretty near, to hear it in every one's mouth." Poor old soul! she little knew how people can starve, and break their hearts, and die for want of food or love in London, and no one be the wiser or the sadder. ”

“ And all his plans for the future, his dreams of reparation, of tender reconciliation with Edith, and of happy, peaceful days that would obliterate the memory of past trouble and alienation, they had all vanished with the gypsy baby; life was as empty as the cradle by Mrs Gray's side. ”

“ Indeed, power is beauty; for there is no real beauty in weakness, physical or mental. His eyes had the beauty of many doctors' eyes,—kind and patient, from experience of human weakness and trouble of all sorts; keen and penetrating, as having looked through the mists of pain and disease, searching for hope, ay, and finding it too sometimes where other men could only find despair; brave and steady, as having looked through the glorious glass of science and seen, more plainly the more he looked, the working of the Everlasting Arms ”

“ He came nearest it sometimes in those long evenings of organ playing, of the length of which poor little Jack Davis, the blower, so bitterly complained, when the long sad notes wailed and sobbed through the little church like the voice of a weary, sick soul making its complaint. But even so he could not tell it all to God, though he had been given that power of expression in music, which must make it easier to those so gifted to cry unto the Lord. ”

“ Who so poor but what he has one or more of these barley loaves of daily life to offer to Him Who gave us all? I am not here to beg and entreat for your money, though to our dim sight it seems sorely needed just now, when, from village after village, the cry comes to me for teachers and for light, and I have no men or means to send them; and worse still is the silence of those who are in such utter darkness; they do not know their own need. ”

“ His little Zoe! he could not possibly have been so utterly deceived all through; the baby who had lain on his bed, whose little face he had felt as he carried her up to the Grays' cottage in the dark, whom he had seen day after day, and never failed to notice the likeness, growing stronger with the child's growth. Was it all a delusion? all the foolish fancy of a fond, old man? ”

“ Very improbable, you will say, perhaps, that these two waifs, these floating straws, should have drifted together on the great ocean of London life. Yes, very improbable, well-nigh impossible, I agree, if it is mere chance that guides our way; but stranger, more improbable things happen every day; and, if we mean anything by Providence, it is no longer difficult to understand, for we can see the Hand leading, guiding, arranging, weaving the tangled, confused threads of human life into the grand, clear, noble pattern of divine purpose. ”

“ On her side, Edith was quite as obstinate and resentful. She had no idea of humbling herself and asking pardon. She thought she had quite a right to do as she liked, and she believed her father would be too unhappy without her to bear the separation long. She very soon found out the mistake she had made—indeed, even in the midst of her infatuation about Martin Blake, I think there lurked a certain distrust of him, and they had not been married many weeks—I might almost say days—before this distrust was more than realised. ”

“ The kind old doctor liked to tell the story over a glass of port wine to the friends round his shining mahogany (he was old-fashioned, and thought scorn of claret and dinners a la Russe) . "I was the making of the man," he would say; "and I'm as proud of him, by Jove! sir, as if he were a son of my own."
It is quite as difficult to rise in the world gracefully as to come down; but every one agreed that John Carter managed to do it, and just from this reason, that there was no pretence about him. ”

“ A baby was none the better or healthier for being dressed up in frills and lace; and Mrs Gray was a thoroughly clean motherly woman, and would do well by the child.
All the same, when Jane came back from Stokeley next day and unfolded the parcel she had brought from the draper's there, he could not help feeling that that somewhat dingy lavender, though it might wash like a rag, was, to say the least, uninteresting, and the texture of the flannel, even to his undiscriminating eye, was a trifle rough and coarse for baby limbs. ”

“ Reader, think of some lovely picture of rustic life, with tender lights and pleasant shadows, with hard lines softened, and sharp angles touched into gentle curves, with a background of picturesque, satisfying appropriateness, with the magic touches that bring out the beauty and refinement and elegance of the scene, which are really there, and that subtly tone down all the roughness and awkwardness and coarseness, which are also equally there. ”

“ Gray, coming in dirty and tired in the evening, after a long day's work in the hayfield or carting manure, was never too tired, nor for the matter of that too dirty, to take the baby, and let it dab its fat hands on his face, or claw at his grizzled whiskers or slobber open-mouthed kisses on his cheeks. ”

“ Somehow the description brought back to his mind his mother coming down the brick path from the door at home, with her Sunday bonnet on, and her pattens in her hand, and the heavy-headed double stocks and columbines tapping against her short petticoats. The doctor smiled to himself; and even while he smiled the door was pushed open, and before him he saw, with a background of the gas-lit hall and the respectful Hyder, by this time developed into an incontrollable grin, his mother, in her Sunday bonnet and with her pattens in her hand. ”

“ And then her trembling hand was feeling for something, and Laddie guessed her wish, and put his own hand and Violet's into it; two young hands, full of life and health and pulsation, under the old, worn, hard worked hand, growing cold and weak with death. ”

“ Mr Robins often discovered her in tears, and she was constantly going out for hours at a time, having always hitherto been almost too much of a stay-at-home. He suspected that these lengthened absences meant visits to the Grays' cottage, and that baby-worship that women find so delightful; but he found out accidentally that she had never been near the cottage since the baby's arrival, and when he made an excuse of sending a book by her to Bill to get her to go there, she met the boy at the bottom of the lane, and did not go on to the cottage. ”

“ The early November dusk was coming on before she set out on her pilgrimage again, the darkness coming all the earlier for the fog and the London smoke and then, hardly caring which way she went, she turned her face eastward, not knowing that she was making for the very heart of London. The streets were even more crowded and confusing than they had been in the morning; and the gas and the lighted shops, and the noise, and her own weariness combined to increase her bewilderment. ”

“ She never left Zoe out of the calculation, even when it became most difficult to adjust the number of mouths to be fed with the amount of food to be put into them, and over this dark future fell the darker shadow of the workhouse, which closes the vista of life to most of the poor. No wonder they live entirely in the present, and shut their eyes persistently to the future! ”

“ Carter, not unwillingly, from the Medical Review to thoughts of the giver. Her name is Violet, too, and so are her eyes, though the long lashes throw such a shadow that you might fancy they were black themselves. It is not every one—indeed, it is John Carter alone—who is privileged to look straight down into those eyes, and see the beauty of their color; only he, poor, foolish fellow, forgets to take advantage of his opportunity, and only notices the great love for him that shines there and turns his brain with happiness. His hand trembles as he stretches it to take the specimen glass ”