OLIVE. CHAPTER I. It was again the season of late summer; and Time's soothing shadow had risen up between the daughter and her grief. The grave in the beautiful churchyard of Harbury was bright with many months' growth of grass and flowers. It never looked dreary -nay, often seemed almost to smile. It was watered by no tears-it never had been. Those which Olive shed were only for her own loneliness, and at times she felt that even these were wrong. Many people, see ing how calm she was, and how, after a season, she fell into her old pursuits and her kindly duties to all around, used to say, "Who would have thought that Miss Rothesay would have forgotten her mother so easily?" But she did not forget. Selfish, worldly mourners are they, who think that the memory of the beloved lost can only be kept green by tears. Olive Rothesay was not of these. To her, her mother's departure appeared no more like death, "than did one Divine parting-with reverence be it spoken!-appear to those who stood and looked heavenward from the hill of Bethany. And thus should we think upon all happy and holy deaths-if we fully and truly believed the faith we aver. Olive did not forget her mother—she could as soon have forgotten her own soul. In all her actions, words, and thoughts, this most sacred memory abided-a continual presence, silent as sweet, and sweet as holy. When her many and most affectionate friends had beguiled her into cheerfulness, so that they fancied she had lost thought of her sorrow, she used to say in her heart, 66 See, mother, I can think of thee and not grieve. I would not, that, looking down from heaven, it should pain thee to know I suffer still!" Yet human feelings could not utterly be suppressed; and there were many times, when at night-time she buried her face on the now lonely pillow, and blindly stretched out her arms into the empty darkness, crying, "My mother, oh my mother!" But then strong love came between Olive and her agony, whispering, "Child, wherever her spirit abides, thy mother forgets not thee !" And so the desolate one grew calm. B 2 |