"Did you think," asked a cheerful voice at her elbow, "that I was never coming back to finish my job?"
Miss Evelina started, and gazed into the round, smiling face of Piper Tom, who was accompanied, as always, by his faithful dog.
"'T is not our way," he went on, including the yellow mongrel in the pronoun, "to leave undone what we've set our hands and paws to do, eh, Laddie?"
He waited a moment, but Miss Evelina did not speak.
"I got some seeds for my garden," he continued, taking bulging parcels from the pockets of his short, shaggy coat. "The year's sorrow is at an end."
"Sorrow never comes to an end," she cried, bitterly.
"Doesn't it," he asked. "How old is yours?"
"Twenty-five years," she answered, choking. The horror of it was pressing heavily upon her.
"Then," said the Piper, very gently, "I'm thinking there is something wrong. No sorrow should last more than a year--'t is written all around us so."
"Written? I have never seen it written."
"No," returned the Piper, kindly, "but 't is because you have not looked to see. Have you ever known a tree that failed to put out its green leaves in the Spring, unless it had died from lightning or old age? When a rose blossoms, then goes to sleep, does it wait for more than a year before it blooms again? Is it more than a year from bud to bud, from flower to flower, from fruit to fruit? 'T is God's way of showing that a year of darkness is enough,--at a time."
The Piper's voice was very tender; the little dog lay still at his feet. She leaned against the crumbling wall, and turned her veiled face away.
"'T is not for us to be happy without trying," continued the Piper, "any more than it is for a tree to bear fruit without effort. All the beauty and joy in the world are the result of work--work for each other and in ourselves. When you see a butterfly over a field of clover, 't is because he has worked to get out of his chrysalis. He was not content to abide within his veil."
"Suppose," said Miss Evelina, in a voice that was scarcely audible, "that he couldn't get out?"
"Ah, but he could," answered the Piper. "We can get out of anything, if we try. I'm not meaning by escape, but by growth. You put an acorn into a crevice in a rock. It has no wings, it cannot fly out, nobody will lift it out. But it grows, and the oak splits the rock; even takes from the rock nourishment for its root."