Read Online Love's Pursuit by Siri Mitchell - Free Book Online Page B

appreciated from inside the house with a ladle in my hand as well as here, idling with you.”
    “Must you always be so busy?”
    “Have you not heard that idle hands are the devil’s workshop?”
    He reached up a finger to scratch behind his ear. “I seem to recall being told the same. By a knobbly-headed Puritan with a great air of nothing better to do than to find fault with me. And if I recall correctly, he was doing naught himself. Just as you are now. So why not walk a turn with me . . . since you seem to be doing nothing at all in any case?”
    I did not know whether to be galled that he had called us Puritans knobbly-headed or to be shamed that he had discovered me to be absent some useful activity.
    He took several steps away from me toward the hill.
    I followed him so that I could speak to him . . . once I had determined what it was I wished to say. “We have not, all of us, knobbly heads!”
    “Nay. I spoke a mistruth. Some of you are roundheaded and blockheaded as well. Come. Perhaps you misread my intentions. I do not wish to accost you. I simply wish to come to know you better.”
    “Know me?”
    “Aye.”
    “Know what?”
    “From where have you come—”
    “Boston.”
    “And where are you going?”
    “To gather firewood. Now, if you will excuse me.”
    “Why can you not be restful? And where are your manners? Do you not wish to know more of me?”
    He seemed so certain that he was a fascination that for an instant I longed to tell him that I did not. But it would have been a lie. And so I said nothing.
    “Where I am from, for instance? Do you not wish to know that?”
    “Where are you from, then?”
    “Gloucester. And you do not have to ask so meanly.”
    “I do not have to ask at all.”
    “Is there nothing more you wish to know of me?”
    Aye. There was. I wished to know how he could laugh so easily when life was so difficult. How he could be so confident when all was so uncertain. And most of all, I wished to know . . . everything. Everything about who he was and why. But I could ask him none of those things. And so I asked him something else instead.
    “You are a soldier for long?”
    “Aye. Too long.” My question must have disappointed him, for he turned from me. But then, just as quickly, he turned back. “You know, you do not have to live like these people.”
    Like these people? These people were me! “How else would you have me live?”
    “Less . . . gravely. Can you never be restful?”
    “I can. As I occupy my hands with a task, then my mind can dwell on other things.”
    “Such as?”
    “Such as . . . God’s great love and His benefits. His care for me and all of His children.”
    “Do your thoughts never go to such things as the setting sun or an evening’s first star?” He swept his arm forward toward the valley.
    As I followed his gesture, I gasped at the beauty of what lay before me. The sky glinted as if dipped in gilt. “I have never seen such a sight.” I was always too busy with preparations for supper.
    “I thought not. Or you would not have protested so greatly.”
    I tore my eyes from the sun’s setting to fix them upon his own.
    Fascinating. They had gone purple in the shadow of the evening. I blinked. And then I remembered who I was and what I was about. “I have dawdled long enough.”
    “Nay. I daresay you do not dawdle enough.”
    Was he daft as well as vain? “We must none of us waste anything that God, in His goodness, has granted us. One day we shall have to stand before Him and account for it all.”
    “Really? You believe that? That God is some glorified clerk, tracking all the minutes of one’s day? As if He has nothing better to do?”
    “You say He does not care what we do with our time?”
    “I say I hope I do the things that please Him most, but I can count on the fact that I will fail to. Most abysmally at times.”
    “Which means you must simply try all the more to please Him.”
    “Nay. It simply means that I rejoice all the