“Poor thing! —­ no wonder she takes it hard,” said the good lady.

“No,” said Clam, —­ she never did take nothin’ easy.”

“Has she been crying all the afternoon?”

“Don’ know,” said Clam; “the eye of curiosity ain’t invited; but she don’t take that easy neither, when she’s about it.  I’ve seen her cry —­ once; she’d do a year o’ your crying in half an hour.”

CHAPTER XIII.

O Land of Quiet! to thy shore the surf
Of the perturbed Present rolls and sleeps;
Our storms breathe soft as June upon thy turf,
And lure out blossoms. 
LOWELL.

They were days of violent grief which for a little while followed each other.  Elizabeth spent them out of doors; in the woods, on the rocks, by the water’s edge.  She would take her bible out with her, and sometimes try to read a little; but a very few words would generally touch some spring which set her off upon a torrent of sorrow.  Pleasant things past or out of her reach, the present time a blank, the future worse than a blank, —­ she knew nothing else.  She did often in her distress repeat the prayer she had made over the first chapter of Matthew; but that was rather the fruit of past thought; she did not think in those days; she gave up to feeling; and the hours were a change from bitter and violent sorrow to dull and listless quiet.  Conscience sometimes spoke of duties resolved upon; impatient pain always answered that their time was not now.

The first thing that roused her was a little letter from Winthrop, which came with the pieces of furniture and stores he sent up to her order.  It was but a word, —­ or two words; one of business, to say what he had done for her; and one of kindness, to say what he hoped she was doing for herself.  Both words were brief, and cool; but with them, with the very handwriting of them, came a waft of that atmosphere of influence —­ that silent breath of truth which every character breathes —­ which in this instance was sweetened with airs from heaven.  The image of the writer rose before her brightly, in its truth and uprightness and high and fixed principle; and though Elizabeth wept bitter tears at the miserable contrast of her own, they were more healing tears than she had shed all those days.  When she dried them, it was with a new mind, to live no more hours like those she had been living.  Something less distantly unlike him she could be, and would be.  She rose and went into the house, while her eyes were yet red, and gave her patient and unwearied attention, for hours, to details of household arrangements that needed it.  Her wits were not wandering, nor her eyes; nor did they suffer others to wander.  Then, when it was all done, she took her bonnet and went back to her old wood-place and her bible, with an humbler and quieter spirit than she had ever brought to it before.  It was the fifth chapter of Matthew now.

The first beatitude puzzled her.  She did not know what was meant by ‘poor in spirit,’ and she could not satisfy herself.  She passed it as something to be made out by and by, and went on to the others.  There were obligations enough.