Nor seldom this
aspect of her Mother's infinite wealth touched her blood, and a strange
sensation as of very lust of life made her wild. At such times she would
pick the green things and tear them and watch the colorless life ooze from
their wounds; she would gather blossoms and scatter them against the wind,
break buds open and pluck their hearts out, fill her mouth with sorrel and
young grass-shoots, and feel the cool saps of them upon her palate. And
sometimes her Mother frightened her, for the dim clouds hid beneath the
horizon of maternity were moving now and their color was dark. Nature had
as many moods as Joan and often looked distant and terrible. Poor little
blue-eyed "sister of the sun and moon!" She likened herself so bravely to
the other children of her Mother--to the stars, to the fair birch-trees,
where emerald showers now twinkled down over the silver stems, to the
uncurling fronds of the fern, to the little trout in the coomb-stream; and
yet she was not content as they were.
"Her's good, so good, but oh! if her was a bit nigher--if I could sit in
her lap an' feel her arms around me an' thread the daisies into chains like
when I was a lil maid! But I be a grawed wummon now--an' yet caan't feel it
so--not yet. Her'll hold my hand, maybe, an' lead me 'pon the road past
pain an' sorrow. I can trust her, 'cause Mister Jan did say as Nature never
lies--never."
So the child's thoughts wandered on a day when she sat upon the bough and
brought a shower of pale petals down with every movement.
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