Page:The Star in the Window.pdf/56

46 "Why, they seem to think," she ran on, "that there's virtue in the mere act of enduring. Jesus Christ endured," she burst forth, bringing the color afresh to Reba's cheeks. One spoke that name only in church or in a lowered tone. "But lands," sacrilegiously it seemed to the girl, Cousin Pattie plowed ahead, "He endured things for the sake of something He wanted, and wanted bad. He had a big, driving purpose, just the way Columbus had, or Lieutenant Scott, or Napoleon, or Joan of Arc. Hardships were just incidental in the lives of men and women like them. While here, the hardships are the whole show. How much you can grin and bear is of more importance than what you're grinning and bearing it for. Here, if you do chance to be born with some big passion that interferes with your meekly bearing your infirmities, then the sooner you pluck it out, and crush it, and submit yourself to your fate, the better for your soul. Humph!" she gave a shrug of impatience. "That's all wrong, Reba," she declared. "Dead wrong!"

Reba had never heard any one talk such heresy as this. It struck at the very foundation of her lifelong belief in resignation.

"Come here," abruptly Cousin Pattie ordered. Then, "See that tooth?" she inquired, rather inelegantly stretching her mouth well to the left, and pointing with a stubby, unmanicured forefinger to a large molar. "See how gray it is beside the others, and dead-looking? A year or two ago a dentist put wires down into all its roots, and bit by bit, gradually dragged out every atom of feeling there was in it. It seems to me a good many women around here are like that tooth. All the nerve in 'em has been taken out, bit by