But he had disappeared.
"As you have spoken plainly to me, knowing, me, to be a wife and a
mother, you must allow me to 'speak plainly in return," I began.
"Oh, speak plainly, by all means! I am quite sick and tired of having
truth served up in pink cotton, and scented with lavender."
"Then you will permit me to say that when you speak contemptuously of
the vocation of maternity, you dishonor, not only the mother who bore
you, but the Lord Jesus Himself, who chose to be born of woman, and
to be ministered unto by her through a helpless infancy."
Miss Clifford was a little startled.
'How terribly in earnest you are! she said. It is plain that to you,
at any rate, life is indeed no humbug."
I thought of my dear ones, of Ernest, of my children, of mother, and
of James, and I thought of my love to them and of theirs to me. And I
thought of Him who alone gives reality to even such joys as these. My
face must have been illuminated by the thought, for she dropped the
bantering tone she had used hitherto, and asked, with real
earnestness:
"What is it you know, and that I do not know, that makes you so
satisfied, while I am so dissatisfied?"
I hesitated before I answered, feeling as I never felt before how
ignorant, how unfit to lead others, I really am. Then I said:
"Perhaps you need to know God, to know Christ?"
She looked disappointed and tired.
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