I let
her think what she pleased, and bravely lifted up the mount of my head,
like Ararat of old unto the great deluge; but she would not let me talk
as I pleased. Chloe was half a century old, with a warm, affectionate,
red heart under her black seeming; and it pulsated around me now, as I
lay there, under her care, in absolute quiet, hushed to content by her
humming ways and words.
The second hymn of the church-service was sending its voice of worship
up unto the Lord of all the earth, and Chloe and I, two of the children
of that Lord, upon His earth, were awed by it. "The neighbor's boy must
have left a window open," I thought. The fruitage of song blossomed on,
the petalled notes withered and fell, and Chloe garnered in her harvest
from the field, with a quaintly expressed regret that she "wasn't in the
meadows of the land of Canaan, where taller songs were growing."
"Never mind, Chloe," I said; "the hymns of earth are very sweet; you can
wait a little longer, can't you?"
"Don't you talk, child; you'll make your head ache again. Yes, old Chloe
is willing to wait; there's honey and sugar left on the ground for her
to find, only she's old now, she can't _stoop to pick it up_ as well as
she could once."
"What do you mean, Chloe?"
"Didn't I tell ye you mustn't talk, Miss Anna? Don't be trying to
trouble yourself with old Chloe's meanings: they haven't any
understanding in them for other people to find out.
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