Then she felt guilty and shy, but as nobody took any notice,
persuaded herself they had not observed. The unpleasantness of all
this, however, did not prevent her from saying to herself as she
went to bed, "Oh, how delightful it would be to live in a house
where everybody understood, and loved, and thought about everybody
else!" She did not know that she was wishing for nothing more, and
something a little less, than the kingdom of heaven--the very thing
she thought the laird and Cosmo so strange for troubling their
heads about. If men's wishes are not always for what the kingdom of
heaven would bring them, their miseries at least are all for the
lack of that kingdom.
That night Joan dreamed herself in a desert island, where she had
to go through great hardships, but where everybody was good to
everybody, and never thought of taking care except of each other;
and that, when a beautiful ship came to carry her away, she cried,
and would not go.
Three weeks of all kinds of weather, except warm, followed, ending
with torrents of rain, and a rapid thaw; but before that time Joan
had got as careless of the weather as Cosmo, and nothing delighted
her more than to encounter any sort of it with him. Nothing kept
her in-doors, and as she always attended to Grizzie's injunctions
the moment she returned, she took no harm, and grew much stronger.
It is not encountering the weather that is dangerous, but
encountering it when the strength is not equal to the encounter.
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