"Well?3 - said he tenderly, stroking my hair, "what is it? I
would keep all trouble from you, my pet, if I could."
"Papa," I whispered, "that may not be best. We must leave
that. But papa, if you only knew what I know and were glad as
I am glad, - I think I could bear all the rest!"
"How shall I be glad as you are glad, Daisy?" he said, half
sadly.
"Papa, let Jesus make you happy!"
"You are talking Hebrew, my child."
"No, papa; for if you seek Him, He will make you happy."
"Come! we will seek him from to-day," my father said.
And that was my summer on Lebanon. My mother wrote that she
would not join us in Syria; she preferred to remain in Paris,
where she had my aunt Gary's company and could receive the
American news regularly. Her words were bitter and scornful
about the successes of the Northern army and McClellan's
fruitless siege of Yorktown; so bitter, that papa and I passed
them over without a word of comment, knowing how they bore on
my possible future.
But we, we studied the Bible, and we lived on Lebanon. And
when I have said that, I have said all. From one village to
another, higher and higher up, we went; pitching our tents
under the grand old walnut trees, within sight or hearing of
mountain torrents that made witcheries of beauty in the deep
ravines; studying sunrisings, when the light came over the
mountain's brow and lit our broken hillside by degrees, our
walnut tree tops and the thread of the rushing stream; and
sunsets, when the sun looked at us from the far-off
Mediterranean and touched no spot of Lebanon but to make a
glorified place of it. With Mr. Dinwiddie we took rides to
different scenes of wonder and beauty; made excursions
sometimes of a week or two long; we dreamed at Baalbec and
rejoiced under the Cedars. Everywhere papa and I read the
Bible. Mr. Dinwiddie left us for some time during the summer,
and returned again a few days before we left Lebanon and
Syria.
"So you are going to-morrow" - he said the last evening, as he
and I were watching the sunset from the edge of the ravine
which bordered our camping-ground. I made no answer, for my
heart was too full.
"It has been a good summer," he said. I bowed my head in
assent.
"And now," he said, "you push out into the world again. I feel
about you as I did when I saw your little craft just starting
forth, and knew there were breakers ahead."
"You do not know that now, Mr. Dinwiddie?" I said.
"I know there are rocks. If the sea should let you pass them
in quiet, it would be a wonder."