Читать книгу The Shepherd of the North - Richard Aumerle Maher - Страница 7

33

The boy stood watching her eyes closely. He saw them suddenly light up. He knew what that meant. She was seeing the great world with all its wonderful mysteries beckoning her. So he himself had seen it. Now he knew that he had lost.

The Bishop had put on his coat and was ready to go. The day was slipping away and before him there were thirty miles and a train to be caught.

“We must not be hurried, my children,” he said, standing by the boy and girl. “The Sacred Heart Academy at Athens is the best school this side of Albany. The Mother Superior will write you in a few days, telling you when and how to come. If you are ready to go, you will go as she directs.

“You have been a good, brave little girl. A soldier’s daughter could be no more, nor less. God bless you now, and you, too, my boy,” he added.

When he was settled on the sled with Arsene and they were rounding the shoulder of Lansing Mountain, where the pony had broken the trace, he turned to look back at the cabin in the hemlocks.

“To-day,” he said to himself, “I have set two ambitious, eager souls upon the high and stony paths of the great world. Should I have left them where they were?

34

“I shall never know whether I did right or not. Even time will mix things up so that I’ll never be able to tell. Maybe some day God will let me see. But why should he? One can only aim right, and trust in Him.”

35