u ever know such a lot of lovely
things for one girl? All my days are filled with sunshine and love.
Everywhere I look there's nothing but kindness. Do you think the world
is getting really kinder, or is it only that I'm so happy? I can't
help thinking that all that talk I heard in Berlin, all that
restlessness and desire to hit out at somebody, anybody,--the
knock-him-down-and-rob him idea they seemed obsessed with, was simply
because it was drawing near the holiday time of year, and every one was
overworked and nervy after a year's being cooped up in offices; and
then the great heat came and finished them. They were cross, like
overtired children, cross and quarrelsome. How cross I was too,
tormented by those flies! After this month, when everybody has been
away at the sea and in the forests, they'll be different, and as full
of kindliness and gentleness as these gentle kind skies are, and the
morning and the evening, and the placid noons. I don't believe anybody
who has watched cows pasturing in golden meadows, as Bernd and I have
for hours this afternoon, or heard water lapping among reeds, or seen
eagles shining far up in the blue above the pine trees, and drawn in
with every breath the sweetness, the extraordinary warm sweetness, of
this summer in places in the forests and by the sea,--I don't believe
people who had done that could for at least another year want to
quarrel and fight. And by the time they did want to, having got jumpy
in the course of months of uninterrupted herding together, it will be
time for them to go for holidays again, back to the blessed country to
be soothed and healed. And each year we shall grow wiser, each year
more grown-up, less like naughty children, nearer to God. All we want
is time,--time to think and understand. I feel religious now.
Happiness has made me so religious that I would satisfy even Aunt
Edith. I'm sure happiness brings one to God much quicker than ways of
grief. Indeed it's the only right way of being brought, I think. You
know, little mother, I've always hated the idea of being kicked to God,
of getting on to our knees because we've been beaten till we can't
stand. I think if I were to lose what I love,--you, Bernd, or be hurt
in my hands so that I couldn't play,--it wouldn't make me good, it
would make me bad. I'd go all hard, and defy and rebel. And really
God ought to like that best. It's at least a square and manly
attitude. Think how we would d