Heart Reflections Live

"Anne was not sleepy. She was too happy to sleep just yet. She moved softly about the room, putting things away, braiding her hair, looking like a beloved woman. Finally she slipped on a neglige and went across the hall to the boys' room. Walter and Jem in their bed and Shirley in his cot were all sound asleep. The Shrimp, who had outlived generations of pert kittens and become a family habit, was curled up at Shirley's feet. Jem had fallen asleep while reading The Life Book of Captain Jim... it was open on the spread. Why how long Jem looked lying under the bed-clothes! He would soon be grown up. What a sturdy, reliable little chap he was! Walter was smiling in his sleep as some one who knew a charming secret. The moon was shining on his pillow through the bars of the leaded window... casting the shadow of a clearly defined cross on the wall above his head. In long after-years Anne was to remember that and wonder if it was an omen of Courcelette... of a cross-marked grave "somewhere in France." But tonight it was only a shadow... nothing more. The rash had quite gone from Shirley's neck. Gilbert had been right. He was always right.

Nan and Diana and Rilla were all in the next room... Diana, with darling little damp red curls all over her head and one little sunburned hand under her cheek, and Nan with long fans of lashes brushing hers. The eyes behind those blue-veined lids were hazel, like her father's. And Rilla was sleeping on her stomach. Anne turned her right side up, but her buttoned eyes never opened.

They were all growing so fast. In just a few short years they would all be young men and women... youth tiptoe...expectant... astir with its sweet, wild dreams...little ships sailing out of safe harbour to unknown parts. The boys would go away to their life work, and the girls...ah, the mist-veiled forms of beautiful brides might be seen coming down the stairs at Ingleside. But they would be still hers for a few years yet... hers to love and guide... to sing the songs that so many mothers had sung. Hers... and Gilbert's.

FROM "ANNE OF INGLESIDE" BY L M MONTGOMERY.

Labels: Books, godly wives, motherhood, Quote