It was a pretty picture; the stranger's eyes brightened as he
gazed at it. But for the first time in her life Miss Vesta was not
glad to see Melody. The child began to sing, and the woman listened
for the words, with a vague trouble darkening over her perturbed
spirit as a thunder-cloud comes blackening a gray sky, filling it with
angry mutterings, with quick flashes. What if the child should sing
the wrong words, she thought! What were the wrong words, and how
should she know whether they were of God or the Devil?
It was an old song that Melody was singing; she knew few others,
indeed,--only the last verse of an old song, which Vesta Dale had
heard all her life, and had never thought much about, save that it was
a good song, one of the kind Rejoice liked.
"There's a place that is better than this, Robin Ruff,
And I hope in my heart you'll go there;
Where the poor man's as great,
Though he hath no estate,
Ay, as though he'd a thousand a year, Robin Ruff,
As though he'd a thousand a year'"
"So you see," said Melody to the children, as they paced along, "it
doesn't make any real difference whether we have things or don't have
them. It's inside that one has to be happy; one can't be happy from
the outside, ever.
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