ribute to her--so _much_ better is
religion, even her religion, without the liberal arts than the liberal
arts without religion. Faith is the foundation, they are the upper
works."

"Dear, you should have been a preacher!"

"No, I'd always be preaching that one sermon. If I didn't tell it to
you, I'd have to tell it to her, or make you tell her."

Mrs. Gilmore had not told her, but between the two women, across the
gulf between them, there had grown such a commerce of silent esteem that
neither Hugh nor Ramsey knew which one's modest liberalism to admire
most. To Ramsey it was nothing against the matron that she was not
nursing the immigrant sick. Only Madame Hayle was allowed to do that,
and the parson's wife, being quite without madame's art of doing as she
pleased, had had to submit conscience and compassions to the captain's
forbiddal, repeated by the commodore and Hugh. But after the play she
had insisted, "strict orders or none, and whether her children were four
or forty-four," on entering the service of the busy Gilmores, "no matter
how," and was now, with old Joy, in the pilot-house, a most timely
successor to the actor's wife in the social care of Ramsey.

For to Ramsey, in this first bereavement of her life, sleep was as
abhorrent as if her brother's burial were already at hand. Grief was
good, for grief was love. Sleep was heartlessness. Moreover, in sleep,
only in sleep, there was no growth. Of course, that was not true; only
yesterday and the day before she had grown consciously between evening
and morning, grown wonderfully. But she had forgotten that and in every
fibre of her being felt a frenzy for growth, for getting on, like the
frenzy of a bird left behind by the flock. All the boat's human life,
all its majestic going--led on by the stars--and especially all those by
whose command or guidance it went, made for growth. So, too, did this
dear Mrs. So-and-so, who could so kindly understand how one in deep
sorrow may go on seeing the drollery of things. Grief, love, solace,
growth, she was all of them in one. If she, Ramsey, might neither nurse
the sick with her mother nor watch with Mrs. Gilmore and "Harriet," here
was this dear, fair lady with the tenderest, most enlightening words of
faith and comfort that ever had fallen on her ears; words never too
eager or too many, but always just in time and volume to satisfy grief's
fitful questionings.

For refuge they had tried every quarter of these upp