Page:Ralph Connor - The man from Glengarry.djvu/377

  "But, auntie, don't you feel sometimes like getting away and having a little fun? Own up, now."

"Fun?" laughed Mrs. Murray.

"Well, not fun exactly, but a good time with things you enjoy so much, music, literature, and that sort of thing. Do you remember, Kate, the first time you met auntie, when we took her to Hamlet?"

Kate nodded,

"She wasn't quite sure about it, but I declare till I die I will never forget the wonder and the delight in her face. I tell you I wept that night, but not at the play. And how she criticised the actors; even Booth himself didn't escape," continued Harry; "and so I say it's a beastly shame that you should spend your whole life in the backwoods there and have so little of the other sort of thing. Why you are made for it!"

"Harry," answered Mrs. Murray, in surprise, "that was my work, given me to do. Could I refuse it? And besides after all, fun, as you say, passes; music stops; books get done with; but those other things, the things that Ranald and I have seen, will go on long after my poor body is laid away."

"But still you must get tired," persisted Harry. "Yes, I get tired," she replied, quietly. At the little touch of weariness in the voice, Kate, who was looking at the beautiful face, so spiritual, and getting, oh, so frail, felt a sudden rush of tears in her eyes. But there was no self-pity in that heroic soul. "Yes, I get tired," she repeated, "but, Harry, what does that matter? We do our work and then we will rest. But oh, Harry, my boy, when I come to your city and