THE LITTLE BROWN BOOK
145
“I’m so sorry I ever thought her funny and meddlesome.”
“She was good and strong and brave,” I said. “I could never have been as unselfish as she was.”
And I thought of Whittier’s lines,
“The outward, wayward life we see
The hidden springs we may not know.”
At the back of the little brown book we found a
faded water-color sketch of a young girl — such a
slim, pretty little thing, with big blue eyes and lovely,
long, rippling, golden hair. Paul Osborne’s name
was written in faded ink across the corner.
We put everything back in the box. Then we sat for a long time by my window in silence and thought of many things, until the rainy twilight came down and blotted out the world.
