“If you’re right, miss, and there be a
God, either he’s not so good as you would be
if you were God, or else somebody interferes, and won’t
let him do his best.”
“Shall I tell you what our clergyman said to
me the other day?” returned Barbara.
“Yes, if you please, miss. I don’t
mind what you say, because the God you would
have me believe in, is like yourself; and if he be,
and be like you, he will set everything tight as soon
as ever he can.”
“What Mr. Wingfold said was this—that
it was not fair, when a man had made something for
a purpose, to say it was not good before we knew what
his purpose with it was. ‘I don’t
like,’ he said, ’even my wife to look
at my verses before they’re finished! God
can’t hide away his work till it is finished,
as I do my verses, and we ought to take care what we
say about it. God wants to do something better
with people than people think.’”
“Is he a poet?” said Richard. “But
when I think how he looked at the sunrise—of
course he is! That man don’t talk a bit
like a clergyman, miss; he talks just like any other
man—only better than I ever heard man talk
before. I couldn’t help liking him from
the first, and wishing I might meet him again!
But I think I could put him a question or two yet
that would puzzle him!”
“I don’t know,” answered Barbara;
“but one thing I am sure of, that, if you did
puzzle him, he would say he was puzzled, and must have
time to think it over!”
“That is to behave like a man!—and
after all, clergymen are men, and there must be good
men among them!—But do you think, miss,
you could get Arthur’s address from Alice?
The office is not where it used to be.”
“I dare say I could.”
“You see, miss, I shall have to go back to London.”
There was a tone and tremble in his words, to which,
not to the words themselves, Barbara made reply.
“Will anyone dare to say,” she rejoined,
“that we shall not meet again?”
“The sort of God you believe in, miss, would
not say it,” he answered; “but the sort
of God my mother believes in would.”
“I know nothing about other people’s Gods,”
rejoined Barbara. “Indeed,” she added,
“I know very little about my own; but I mean
to know more: Mr. Wingfold will teach me!”
“Take care he don’t overpersuade you,
miss. You have been very good to me, and I couldn’t
bear you to be made a fool of. Only he
can’t be just like the rest!”
“He will persuade me of nothing that doesn’t
seem to me true—be certain of that, Richard.
And if it please God to part us, I will pray and keep
on praying to him to let us meet again. If I have
been good to you, you have been much better to me!”
Richard was not elated. He only thought, “How
kind of her!”
RICHARD AND VIXEN.
