Would it come to her to regret the quietness of life which she was laying by for ever as a garment that had galled and fretted her?--that life she had inwardly compared to a dead mill-stream, flecked only by the shadow and sunlight of perpetually recurring days? Would there come a time when the burden and heat of the day would oppress her?--when the load of existence would be too heavy to bear, and even this retrospect of faint gray distances would seem fair by contrast?
Women who lead contemplative and sedentary lives are overmuch given to this sort of morbid self-questioning. They are for ever examining the spiritual mechanism of their own natures, with the same result as though one took up a feeble and growing plant by the root to judge of its progress. They spend labour for that which is not bread. By and by, out of the vigour of her busy life, Mildred learnt the wholesome sweetness of a motto she ever afterwards cherished as her favourite: _Laborare est orare_. Polly's questions, direct or indirect, sometimes ruffled the elder woman's tranquillity, however gently she might put them by. 'Were you ever a girl, Aunt Milly?--a girl like me, I mean?' And as Mildred bit her lip and coloured slightly at a question that would have galled any woman of eight-and-twenty, she continued, caressingly, 'You are so nice; only just a trifle too solemn. I think, after all, I would rather be Polly than you. You seem to have had no pictures in your life.'
'My dear child, what do you mean?' returned Mildred; but she spoke with a little effort.
'I mean, you don't seem to have lived out pretty little bits, as I have. You have walked every day over that common and down those long white sunny roads, where there is nothing to imagine, unless one stares up at the clouds--just clouds and dust and wheel-ruts. You have never gone through a forest by moonlight, as I have, and stopped at a little rickety inn, with a dozen _Jäger_ drinking _lager-bier_ under the linden-trees, and the peasants dancing in their _sabots_ on a strip of lawn. You have never----' continued Polly breathlessly; but Mildred interrupted her.
'Stop, Polly; I love your reminiscences; but I want to ask you a question. Is that all you saw in our walk to-day--clouds and dust and wheel-ruts?'