Page:Eliot - Daniel Deronda, vol. II, 1876.djvu/313

 "I think of what really was. It was you, and not another, who found me, and were good to me."

"I agree with Mirah," said Mrs Meyrick. "Saint Anybody is a bad saint to pray to."

"Besides, Anybody could not have brought me to you," said Mirah, smiling at Mrs Meyrick. "And I would rather be with you than with any one else in the world except my mother. I wonder if ever a poor little bird, that was lost and could not fly, was taken and put into a warm nest where there was a mother and sisters who took to it so that everything came naturally, as if it had been always there. I hardly thought before that the world could ever be as happy and without fear as it is to me now." She looked meditative a moment, and then said, "Sometimes I am a little afraid."

"What is it you are afraid of?" said Deronda, with anxiety.

"That when I am turning at the corner of a street I may meet my father. It seems dreadful that I should be afraid of meeting him. That is my only sorrow," said Mirah, plaintively.

"It is surely not very probable," said Deronda, wishing that it were less so; then, not to let the opportunity escape—"Would it be a great grief to you now, if you were never to meet your mother?"