Read Online Phoebe Deane by Grace Livingston Hill - Free Book Online
Authors: Grace Livingston Hill
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much if he is poor, if only he loves you better than himself and is worthy of your love. Never marry anyone for a home, or a chance to have your own way, or freedom from good honest work. There will be no happiness in it. Trust your mother, for she knows. Do not marry anyone to whom you cannot look up and give honor next to God. Unless you can marry such a man it is better not to marry at all, believe your mother, child. I say it lovingly, for I have seen much sorrow and would protect you.
" And now, my sweet child, with a face like the dawn of the morning, and eyes so untroubled, if when you read this anything has come into your life to make you unhappy, just try to lay it all down for a little while and feel your mother's love about you. See, I have made this bright sunny dress for you, every stitch set with love, and I want you to wear it on your birthday to remind you of me. It is yellow, because that is the glory color, the color of the sunshine I have always loved so much. I want you to think of me in a bright, sunny, happy way, and as in a glory of happiness, waiting for you; not as dead, and lying in the grave. Think of my love for you as a joy, and not a lost one, either, for I am sure that where I am going I shall love you just the same, and more.
" I am very tired and must not write any more, for there are other letters yet to write and much to do before I can feel ready to go and leave you, but as I am writing this birthday letter for you I am praying God that He will bring some brightness into your life, the beginning of some great joy, on this your eighteenth birthday, that shall be His blessing, and my birthday gift to my child. I put a kiss here where I write my name and give you with it more love than
you can ever understand.
" Your Mother."
The tears rained down upon her hands as she held the letter, and when it was finished she put her head down on her lap and cried as she had not cried since her mother died. It seemed as if her head were once more upon that dear mother's lap and she could feel the smooth, gentle touch of her mother's hand passing over her hair and her hot temples as when she was a little child.
The sunlight sifted softly down between the yellowed chestnut leaves, sprinkling gold upon the golden hem of her gown, and glinting on her shining hair. The brown nuts dropped now and then about her, reverently, as if they would not disturb her if they could help it, and the fat gray squirrels silently regarded her, pausing in their work of gathering in the winter's store, then whisked noiselessly away. It was all quite still in the woods except for the occasional falling of a nut, or the stir of a leaf, or the skitter of a squirrel, for Phoebe did not sob aloud. Her grief was deeper than that. Her soul was crying out to one who was far away and yet who seemed so near to her that nothing else mattered for the time.
She was thinking over all her sad little life, telling it to her mother in imagination, trying to draw comfort from the letter, and to reconcile the realities with what her mother had said. Would her mother have been just as sure that it would all come out right if she had known the real facts? Would she have given the same advice? Carefully she thought it over, washing the anger away in her tears. Yes, she felt sure if her mother had known all she could not have written more truly than she had done. She would have had her say " No " to Hiram, just as she had done, and would have exhorted to patience with Emmeline, and to trust that brightness would sometime come.
She thought of her mother's prayer for her, and almost smiled through her tears to think how impossible that could be. Yet—the day was not done—perhaps there might be some little pleasant thing yet, that she might consider as a blessing and her mother's gift. She would look and wait for it and perhaps it would come. It might be Albert would be kind—he was, sometimes—or if it were not
" And now, my sweet child, with a face like the dawn of the morning, and eyes so untroubled, if when you read this anything has come into your life to make you unhappy, just try to lay it all down for a little while and feel your mother's love about you. See, I have made this bright sunny dress for you, every stitch set with love, and I want you to wear it on your birthday to remind you of me. It is yellow, because that is the glory color, the color of the sunshine I have always loved so much. I want you to think of me in a bright, sunny, happy way, and as in a glory of happiness, waiting for you; not as dead, and lying in the grave. Think of my love for you as a joy, and not a lost one, either, for I am sure that where I am going I shall love you just the same, and more.
" I am very tired and must not write any more, for there are other letters yet to write and much to do before I can feel ready to go and leave you, but as I am writing this birthday letter for you I am praying God that He will bring some brightness into your life, the beginning of some great joy, on this your eighteenth birthday, that shall be His blessing, and my birthday gift to my child. I put a kiss here where I write my name and give you with it more love than
you can ever understand.
" Your Mother."
The tears rained down upon her hands as she held the letter, and when it was finished she put her head down on her lap and cried as she had not cried since her mother died. It seemed as if her head were once more upon that dear mother's lap and she could feel the smooth, gentle touch of her mother's hand passing over her hair and her hot temples as when she was a little child.
The sunlight sifted softly down between the yellowed chestnut leaves, sprinkling gold upon the golden hem of her gown, and glinting on her shining hair. The brown nuts dropped now and then about her, reverently, as if they would not disturb her if they could help it, and the fat gray squirrels silently regarded her, pausing in their work of gathering in the winter's store, then whisked noiselessly away. It was all quite still in the woods except for the occasional falling of a nut, or the stir of a leaf, or the skitter of a squirrel, for Phoebe did not sob aloud. Her grief was deeper than that. Her soul was crying out to one who was far away and yet who seemed so near to her that nothing else mattered for the time.
She was thinking over all her sad little life, telling it to her mother in imagination, trying to draw comfort from the letter, and to reconcile the realities with what her mother had said. Would her mother have been just as sure that it would all come out right if she had known the real facts? Would she have given the same advice? Carefully she thought it over, washing the anger away in her tears. Yes, she felt sure if her mother had known all she could not have written more truly than she had done. She would have had her say " No " to Hiram, just as she had done, and would have exhorted to patience with Emmeline, and to trust that brightness would sometime come.
She thought of her mother's prayer for her, and almost smiled through her tears to think how impossible that could be. Yet—the day was not done—perhaps there might be some little pleasant thing yet, that she might consider as a blessing and her mother's gift. She would look and wait for it and perhaps it would come. It might be Albert would be kind—he was, sometimes—or if it were not
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