A Book of Quaker Saints | Page 6

difficult to get.
* * * * *
'It is enough to vex a Saint!' her kind nurse exclaimed when Lois spilled her jam at tea, all down her clean white frock. Or, on other days, 'Oh dear! my patiences is not so good as they once were!' and, 'These rheumatics would try the patience of a Saint!' nurse would say, with a weary sigh.
'Then the reason my Nanny isn't a Saint is because she gets vexed when I'm naughty, and because she isn't patient when she has a pain,' reasoned Lois. 'What a number of things it does seem to take to make a Saint! But then it takes eggs and milk and butter and sugar and flour and currants and raisins too to make a cake. Saints must be brave and faithful; never get vexed; have patience always. Mother said patience was the beginning of everything, when I stamped my foot because I broke my cotton. Do Saints have to begin with patience too? If only I could see a real live one with my own eyes and find out!'
Yet, strange to say, when Lois was told that she was looking at a 'real live Saint' at last, the little girl did not even wish to believe it. This happened one Saturday afternoon. She was walking with her governess to a beautiful wooded Dene, through which a clear stream hurried to join the big black river that flowed past the windows of Lois' home. On the way to the Dene they passed near a broad marsh with stepping-stones across it. Close to the river Lois saw, in the distance, the roofs of some wretched-looking cottages. Evidently on her way to these cottages, balancing herself on the slippery stepping-stones, was a little old lady in a hideous black bonnet with jet ornaments that waggled as she moved, and shiny black gloves screwed up into tight corkscrews at the finger ends. She carried a large basket in one hand, and held up her skirts with the other, showing that she wore boots with elastic sides, which Lois particularly disliked.
'Look there!' her governess said to Lois, 'actually crossing the marsh to visit that den of fever! Old Miss S ... may not be a beauty, but she certainly is a perfect Saint!'
'Oh no, she's not!' cried Lois with much vehemence. 'At least, I mean I hope she isn't,' she added the next minute. 'You see,' she went on apologetically, 'I have a very special reason for being interested in Saints; I don't at all want any of my Saints to look ugly like that. And, what is more, I don't believe they do!'
* * * * *
Many months passed before the time came, when she was least expecting it, that Lois saw, she actually did see, a 'real live Saint' for herself.
How did she know it was a Saint? Lois could not tell how she knew; but from the very first moment that she found herself looking up into one of the kindest, most loving faces that she had ever seen, she was perfectly sure that she had found a Saint at last. She saw no halo--at least no golden halo; but the white hair that tenderly framed the white face looked almost like a halo of silver, the little girl thought. It was not a beautiful face; at any rate not what Lois would have called beautiful beforehand. It had many wrinkles though the skin was fresh and clear. The eyes looked, somehow, as if they had shed so many tears long ago, that now there were no tears left to shed; nothing remained but smiles. Perhaps that was the reason they were nearly always smiling. As Lois looked up and saw that gentle old face bending over her, it gave her the same sort of mysterious feeling that she had when she gazed up into the cloudless blue sky at noonday, or into a night sky full of stars. She seemed to be looking up, as high as ever she could, into something infinitely far above her; and yet to be looking down into something as well, deep down into an endless depth. Or rather, she felt that she was neither looking up nor down, but that she was looking through....
'Why, Saints are a sort of window after all,' Lois said to herself, as she gave a jump of joy,--'real windows! Only not the glass kind! I have found out at last what makes a Saint, and what real live Saints look like. It is not being killed only; though I suppose they must always be ready to be killed. It is not being made of all the difficult things inside only; though, of course, they must always be full of them. It certainly isn't wearing ugly clothes or anything horrid.