Three weeks had gone by since Mother Carey's departure for Fortress
Monroe, and the children had mounted from one moral triumph to another.
John Bunyan, looking in at the windows, might have exclaimed:--
Who would true valor see
Let him come hither.
It is easy to go wrong in a wicked world, but there are certain
circumstances under which one is pledged to virtue; when, like a knight
of the olden time, you wear your motto next your heart and fight for
it,--"Death rather than defeat!" "We are able because we think we are
able!" "Follow honor!" and the like. These sentiments look beautifully
as class mottoes on summer graduation programmes, but some of them,
apparently, disappear from circulation before cold weather sets in.
It is difficult to do right, we repeat, but not when mother is away from
us for the first time since we were born; not when she who is the very
sun of home is shining elsewhere, and we are groping in the dim light
without her, only remembering her last words and our last promises. Not
difficult when we think of the eyes the color of the blue velvet bonnet,
and the tears falling from them. They are hundreds of miles away, but we
see them looking at us a dozen times a day and the last thing at night.
Not difficult when we think of father; gay, gallant father, desperately
ill and mother nursing him; father, with the kind smile and the jolly
little sparkles of fun in his eyes; father, tall and broad-shouldered,
splendid as the gods, in full uniform; father, so brave that if a naval
battle ever did come his way, he would demolish the foe in an instant;
father, with a warm strong hand clasping ours on high days and holidays,
taking us on great expeditions where we see life at its best and taste
incredible joys.
The most quarrelsome family, if the house burns down over their heads,
will stop disputing until the emergency is over and they get under a new
roof. Somehow, in times of great trial, calamity, sorrow, the
differences that separate people are forgotten. Isn't it rather like the
process in mathematics where we reduce fractions to a common
denominator?
It was no time for anything but superior behavior in the Carey
household; that was distinctly felt from kitchen to nursery. Ellen the
cook was tidier, Joanna the second maid more amiable. Nancy, who was
"responsible," rose earlier than the rest and went to bed later, after
locking doors and windows that had been left unlocked since the flood.
"I am responsible," she said three or four times each day, to herself,
and, it is to be feared, to others! Her heavenly patience in dressing
Peter every few hours without comment struck the most callous observer
as admirable. Peter never remembered that he had any clothes on. He
might have been a real stormy petrel, breasting the billows in his
birthday suit and expecting his feathers to be dried when and how the
Lord pleased. He comported himself in the presence of dust, mud, water,
liquid refreshment, and sticky substances, exactly as if clean white
sailor suits grew on every bush and could be renewed at pleasure.
Even Gilbert was moved to spontaneous admiration and respect at the
sight of Nancy's zeal. "Nobody would know you, Nancy; it is simply
wonderful, and I only wish it could last," he said. Even this style of
encomium was received sweetly, though there had been moments in her
previous history when Nancy would have retorted in a very pointed
manner. When she was "responsible," not even had he gone the length of
calling Nancy an unspeakable pig, would she have said anything. She had
a blissful consciousness that, had she been examined, indications of
angelic wings, and not bristles, would have been discovered under
her blouse.
Gilbert, by the way, never suspected that the masters in his own school
wondered whether he had experienced religion or was working on some sort
of boyish wager. He took his two weekly reports home cautiously for fear
that they might break on the way, pasted them on large pieces of paper,
and framed them in elaborate red, white, and blue stars united by strips
of gold paper. How Captain and Mrs. Carey laughed and cried over this
characteristic message when it reached them! "Oh! they _are_ darlings,"
Mother Carey cried. "Of course they are," the Captain murmured feebly.
"Why shouldn't they be, considering you?"
"It is really just as easy to do right as wrong, Kathleen," said Nancy
when the girls were going to bed one night.
"Ye-es!" assented Kathleen with some reservations in her tone, for she
was more judicial and logical than her sister. "But you have to keep
your mind on it so, and never relax a single bit! Then it's lots easier
for a few weeks than it is for long stretches!"
"That's true," agreed Nancy; "it would be hard to keep it up forever.
And you have to love somebody or something like fury every minute or you
can't do it at all. How do the people manage that can't love like that,
or haven't anybody to love?"
"I don't know." said Kathleen sleepily. "I'm so worn out with being
good, that every night I just say my prayers and tumble into bed
exhausted. Last night I fell asleep praying, I honestly did!"
"Tell that to the marines!" remarked Nancy incredulously.