Thomas Wingfold, Curate, vol 2 | Page 2

itself, I find no refuge but the offering of it back to him
who thought it worth making. I say to him: 'Lord, it is thine, not
mine;--see to it, Lord. Thou and thy eternity are mine, Father of Jesus
Christ.'"
He covered his eyes with his hands, and his lips grew white, and
trembled. Thought had turned into prayer, and both were silent for a
space. Rachel was the first to speak.

"I think I understand, uncle," she said. "I don't mind being God's dwarf.
But I would rather be made after his own image; this can't be it. I
should like to be made over again."
"And if the hope we are saved by be no mockery, if St. Paul was not the
fool of his own radiant imaginings, you will be, my child.--But now let
us forget our miserable bodies. Come up to my room, and I will read
you a few lines that came to me this morning in the park."
"Won't you wait for Mr. Wingfold, uncle? He will be here yet, I think.
It can't be ten o'clock. He always looks in on Saturdays as he goes
home from his walk. I should like you to read them to him too. They
will do him good, I know."
"I would, my dear, willingly, if I thought he would care for them. But I
don't think he would. They are not good enough verses. He has been
brought up on Horace, and, I fear, counts the best poetry the neatest."
"I think you must be mistaken there, uncle; I have heard him talk
delightfully about poetry."
"You must excuse me if I am shy of reading my poor work to any but
yourself, Rachel. My heart was wo much in it, and the subject is so
sacred--"
"I am sorry you should think your pearls too good to cast before Mr.
Wingfold, uncle," said Rachel, with a touch of disappointed temper.
"Nay, nay, child," returned Polwarth, "that was not a good thing to say.
What gives me concern is, that there is so much of the rough dirty shell
sticking about them, that to show them would be to wrong the truth in
them."
Rachel seldom took long to repent. She came slowly to her uncle,
where he stood with the lamp in his hand, looking in his face with a
heavenly contrition, and saying nothing. When she reached him, she
dropped on her knees, and kissed the hand that hung by his side. Her
temper was poor Rachel's one sore-felt trouble.
Polwarth stooped and kissed her on the forehead, raised her, and
leading her to the stair, stood aside to let her go first. But when she had
been naughty Rachel would never go before her uncle, and she drew
back. With a smile of intelligence he yielded and led the way. But ere
they had climbed to the top, Rachel heard Mr. Wingfold's step, and
went down again to receive him.

CHAPTER II
.
A DREAM.

Invited to ascend, Wingfold followed Rachel to her uncle's room, and
there, whether guided by her or not, the conversation presently took
such a turn that at length, of his own motion, Polwarth offered to read
his verses. From the drawer of his table he took a scratched and scored
halfsheet, and--not in the most melodious of voices, yet in one whose
harshness and weakness could not cover a certain refinement of
spiritual tenderness--read as follows:
Lord, hear my discontent: All blank I stand, A mirror polished by thy
hand; Thy sun's beams flash and flame from me-- I cannot help it: here
I stand, there he; To one of them I cannot say-- Go, and on yonder
water play. Nor one poor ragged daisy can I fashion-- I do not make the
words of this my limping passion. If I should say: Now I will think a
thought, Lo! I must wait, unknowing, What thought in me is growing,
Until the thing to birth is brought; Nor know I then what next will come
From out the gulf of silence dumb. I am the door the thing did find To
pass into the general mind; I cannot say I think-- I only stand upon the
thought-well's brink; From darkness to the sun the water bubbles up-- I
lift it in my cup. Thou only thinkest--I am thought; Me and my thought
thou thinkest. Nought Am I but as a fountain spout From which thy
water welleth out. Thou art the only One, the All in all. --Yet when my
soul on thee doth call And thou dost answer out of everywhere, I in thy
allness have my perfect share.
While he read Rachel crept to his knee, knelt down, and laid her head
upon it.
If we