Page:The Dial (Volume 68).djvu/20

12 young men carrying lambs, and the picture, whose authenticity he did not question, aroused no emotion within him. But after he had come to love God, he tightened his heart towards the benignant being in the blue robe.

He was always present, because before every meal they would all put down their heads, so that they breathed upon their plates, and they would ask Jesus to bless their food. Sometimes Gilbert would say it, sometimes Olga, and the food unblessed would have tasted bad in their mouths. Gilbert would have had a vague presentiment of something evil. Did Garna and Mother love God? Garna must, because every day she would put on her gold-rimmed spectacles and read a chapter in her Bible, and mother would kneel down with Gilbert and Olga at night while they said their prayers, and often murmur something fervently with them. The prayers, they understood, were addressed directly to God in heaven, and were necessary if you were to show your gratitude to the Heavenly Father and ensure for yourself a peaceful and secure night. You asked God also to bless all those people you were fond of, and you knew that if they should die before they woke, their souls also would be taken to Heaven with yours.

If it was only with painful effort that Gilbert in his early days of church and Sunday School loved God and Jesus, whom did he love? Did he love Mother? He did not know. He loved her very much at night when he felt her protecting presence in the house, but in the daytime she was a strange being who did not seem interested in Gilbert and Olga. She spent most of her time with little brother, or, if he were asleep, she would be lying stretched across the foot of the bed, with her face in her hands. Often there were tears in her eyes, and if Gilbert wanted her to do something for him, she would say piteously that she was not well. There were no more walks on the village green, but this did not make any difference to Gilbert, for the wonderful yard in which Garna's house stood was a region that could never be explored or exhausted.

The one person that Gilbert knew he loved was Garna. You could not always see her, for she would be shut up in her room; but when you were let in, how inexhaustible she was, how comfortable you felt, playing about on the floor while Garna sat always by the window, sewing, always sewing, looking so wise and jolly and good out of her gold-rimmed spectacles. Garna was always the same,