Page:The Granite Monthly Volume 5.djvu/238

210 shine, and glow, and twinkle in the far away serene blue. "Seems to me it's all prose," she murmured, "from Monday till Saturday, and on,—and on, was there no end to it, would there never be an end to it?" Janet's life was as yet one great, unanswered question. It grew tiresome occasionally, as monologues are apt to do.

Sunday was in its strictest sense a day of rest in the Boyed house-hold. The head of the house laid aside his newspaper, his wife her headache, and with a becoming reverence attended to the duties of the day. To Janet this was her one care-free happy day. Every one was pleasant, cheerful, and well-dressed. It was very easy to be good. But on this particular morning she lingered longer than usual at her simple toilet, trying first the effect of one bright ribbon and then another, to relieve the plainness of her sober gray dress; until finally becoming dissatisfied with all, she hurried down stairs to find sober-eyed, reliable Time, the large sleek family horse already in front of the door, behind him, in the heavy, but capacious wagon the rest of the family were comfortably bestowed; and, with the solemn worshipful tones of the Sabbath bells filling all the valley below, and coming up to meet them as they came down from the hill-side, the Boyed family quietly, decorously journeyed to the same place of worship that had seen already two generations of Boyeds reverently, humbly gather within its sacred walls, and from whose portals the carriers had slowly, sadly came forth at last to lay them away in the neighboring church-yard. Doubtless such thoughts as these were not with Janet, for the deep, dark lights were shining in her eyes, and there was a tender happy smile upon her face. The people in the church, neighbors and friends, all who listened to her clear, pure soprano, soaring up and away from all the other voices, from hearing, involuntarily glanced with surprise at the singer, for although they had heard the same voice, and seen the same face so many times at their Sunday worship, that it had come to be considered an inseparable part of the worship itself; yet to-day there was an added charm upon the pale shy face, and a more gladsome ring in the clear sweet voice. What was the secret that kept whispering itself to her heart through all that long Sabbath day? While others grew restless and a trifle impatient over the tedious doctrinal sermon of their highly venerated teacher and guide; still the dreamy smile and the happy lights did not go out of Janet's face, and in her ears the voice of the preacher, deep and unmelodious though it was, became musically mingled with the wild, joyous carol of a most audacious songster perched lightly upon a neighboring tree just by the open window; or with the drowsy tinkling and plaintive bleating which came to her afar off from the wooded pasture lands beyond. But the secret that came creeping through it all; that like some familiar strain of music, having lost itself in a labyrinth of variations and improvisations, finally comes forth again in all its original beauty and sweetness;—the secret—what was it? Among the worshipers was a young man apparently at home among this congregation, and yet from unmistakable evidences not of them. He seemed to be among friends who were strangers; to be attempting to grasp familiarly what was half forgotten; to be endeavoring to bridge over the distance between the long yesterday of the past, and short to-day of the present, so that the past might appear as if it had never been, and the present might lose its identity in the past. This was Arthur Strong. Why need I describe him? His character was like his name, upright, enduring. For the rest, he was scarcely of middle height, straight in figure, with a face which seemed made up of an odd mixture of contradictions. The mouth was hardly firm enough, and the smile that might be seen about it at rare intervals was tender as a woman's; while the deeply set, half shut eyes under the heavy brows; the broad yet low forehead from which the thick