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Theodora, Gift Of God
by
“Don’t you care,” said Mary cheerfully, as she relieved Theodora from the excessive animation. “I can make it up to you when I’m big. My prince husband–I guess he’d better be a king by that time–will go over to your country an’ kill your husband’s father an’ his grandfather an’ all the kings an’ princes until there’s nobody only your husband to be king. Then you’ll be a queen you see, an’ live in a palace. So now hush up.” And one future majesty was rocked upside down by another until the royal face of the younger queen was purple and her voice was still.
Mary found it more difficult to quiet her new and painful agnosticism, and in her efforts to reconcile dogma with manifestation she evolved a series of theological and economical questions which surprised her father and made her mother’s head reel. She further manifested a courteous attention when the minister came to call, and she engaged him in spiritual converse until he writhed again. For a space her investigations led her no whither, and then, without warning, the man of peace solved her dilemma and shed light upon her path.
A neighbor ripe in years and good works had died. The funeral was over and the man of God had stopped to rest in the pleasant shade of Mrs. Buckley’s trees and in the pleasant sound of Mrs. Buckley’s voice. Mary, the gocart, and Theodora completed the group, and the minister spoke.
“A good man,” he repeated, “Ah, Mrs. Buckley, he will be sadly missed! But the Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away. Blessed be–“
“When?” demanded Mary breathlessly. “When does he take away?”
“In His own good time.”
“When’s that?”
“‘Tis not for sinful man to say. He sends His message to the man in the pride of his youth or to the babe in its cradle. He reaches forth His hand and takes away.”
“But when–” Mary was beginning when her mother, familiar with the Socratic nature of her daughter’s conversation and its exhaustive effect upon the interlocutor, interposed a remark which guided the current of talk out of heavenly channels and back to the material plain.
But Mary had learned all that she cared to know. It was not necessary that she should suffer the exactions of the baby or subject her family to them. The Lord had given and would take away! The minister had said so, and the minister knew all about the Lord. And if the powers above were not ready to send for the baby, it would be easy enough to deposit it in the Lord’s own house, which showed its white spire beyond the first turn in the road which led to Camelot. There the Lord would find it and take it away. This would be, she reflected, the quiet, dignified, lady-like thing to do. And the morrow, she decided, would be an admirable day on which to do it.
Therefore, on the morrow she carefully decked Theodora in small finery, hung garlands of red and yellow maple leaves upon the perambulator, twined chains of winter-green berries about its handle, tied a bunch of gorgeous golden rod to its parasol, and trundled it by devious and obscure ways to the sacred precincts of God’s house.
“They look real well,” she commented. “If I was sure about that goat I might keep the cart, but it really ain’t the right kind for a goat. I guess I’d better take ’em back just like they are an’ when the Lord sees how I got ’em all fancied up, he’ll know I ain’t a careless child, an’ maybe I’d get that goat after all.”
So the disprized little gifts of God were bumped up the church steps, wheeled up the aisle, and bestowed in a prominent spot before the chancel rail. Some one was playing soft music at the unseen organ, but Mary accepted soft music as a phenomenon natural to churches, and failed to connect it with human agency. Sedately she set out Theodora’s bows and ruffles to the best advantage. Carefully she rearranged the floral decorations of the perambulator, and set her elastic understudy in erratic motion. Complacently she surveyed the whole and walked out into the sunshine–free. And presently the minister, the intricacies of a new hymn reconciled to the disabilities of a lack of ear and a lack of training, came out into the body of the church, where the gifts of God, bland in smiles and enwreathed in verdure, were waiting to be taken away.