And then they rise higher and higher, and off they go, and she is alone.  Tired out but glad, because she taught them how to use their wings.

VII

“Sterilized and fertilized”

This is Sunday, and we have done all the usual Sunday things.  There won’t be another for seven days.  For that we give thanks in our hearts, but not out loud.

This was Presbyterian Sunday.  Miss Bray is a Presbyterian.

It is a solemn thing to be a Presbyterian, and easy for the mind, too.  Everything is fixed, and there is no unfixing.  You are saved or you are not saved, and you will never know which it is until after you are dead and find out.  Miss Bray believes she is saved, and she takes liberties.  She also thinks everything is as God ordered it, and she believes God ordered poor Mrs. Craddock to die—­that is, took her away.  I don’t.  I think it was that last baby.

She had had twelve, and the thirteenth just wore her out at the thought.  There being nobody to do anything for her, she got up and cooked breakfast in her stocking feet when the baby was only a week old, and that night she had the influenza, and the next pneumonia.  On the sixth day she was dead, and so was the baby.  They forgot to feed it.

I don’t believe God ever took any mothers away intentional.  He never would have made them so necessary if He had meant to take them away when they were most needed.  When they go I believe He is sorry.

I don’t know how to explain it.  Nobody does, though a lot try.  But I know He sees it bigger than we do, and maybe He is working at something that isn’t finished yet.

Minnie Peters is real sick.  Miss Katherine has put her in the hospital-room, and is staying in there with her.

I am all alone by myself to-night.  I don’t like aloneness at night.  It makes you pay too much attention to your feelings, which Miss Katherine says is the cause of more trouble in this world than all other diseases put together.

She says, too, that what we feel about a thing is very often different from the way other people feel about it.  And when you don’t agree with people, the only thing you can be sure about is that they don’t agree with you.  I believe that’s true.  Not being by nature much of an agree-er, and having feelings I hope others don’t, I would be a walking argument if Miss Katherine hadn’t stopped me and explained some things I didn’t realize before.

Last night, being by myself, and not being able to go to sleep, I wrote a piece of poetry.

Miss Katherine says it’s hard to forgive people who think they write poetry, so I won’t show her this.  But it does relieve you to write down a lot of woozy nothing that is somehow like you feel.  This is the poem—­I mean the verses: 

    1

    Out upon life’s ocean vast,
    With the current drifting fast,
    I am sailing.  Oh, alas,
    ’Tis a lonely feeling!