"Would your daughter say so?"
"No," I answered; for I was born at Magnolia. "But I think
home is where we have lived, - is it not?"
"Melbourne?" Mr. Dinwiddie suggested.
"No," said I; "it is not Melbourne now, to be sure; but
neither could it be possibly any place in Europe, or Asia."
"Are you sure? Not in any circumstances?"
I cannot tell what, in his tone or look, drove his meaning
home. But I felt the colour rise in my face and I could not
answer.
"It is where the heart is, after all," Mr. Dinwiddie resumed.
"The Syrian sky does not make much difference. My home is
waiting for me."
"But we speak of home here, and properly."
"Properly, for those who have it."
"I think, Mr. Dinwiddie, that we say 'home' sometimes, when we
speak only of where the heart was."
"Better not," he said. "Let us have a living home, not a dead
one. And that we can, always."
"What do you know of places where the heart was?" said papa,
looking at me curiously.
"Not much, papa; but I was thinking; and I think people mean
that sometimes."
"We will both trust she will never come nearer to the
knowledge," said Mr. Dinwiddie, with one of his bright looks
at papa and at me. It was assuming a little more interest in
our affairs than I feared papa would like; but he took it
quietly. More quietly than I could, though my reason for
disquietude was different. Mr. Dinwiddie's words had set
vibrating a chord in my heart which could not just then give a
note of pleasure. I wanted it to lie still. The wide fair
landscape took a look to me instantly, which indeed belonged
to it, of "places where the heart was;" and the echo of broken
hopes came up to my ear from the gray ruins near and far. Yet
the flowers of spring were laughing and shouting under my
feet. Was it hope, or mockery?
"What are you questioning, Miss Daisy ?" said Mr. Dinwiddie,
as he offered me some fruit.
"I seemed to hear two voices in nature, Mr. Dinwiddie; - I
wanted to find out which was the true."
"What were the voices? - and I will tell you."
"One came from the old heap of Ekron yonder, and the ruins of
Ramleh, and Jerusalem, and Gibeon, and Bethel; - the other
voice came from the flowers."
"Trust the flowers."
"Why, more than the ruins?"
"Remember," - said he. "One is God's truth; the other is man's
falsehood."
"But the ruins tell truth too, Mr. Dinwiddie."
"What truth? They tell of man's faithlessness, perversity,
wrongheadedness, disobedience; persisted in, till there was no
remedy. And now, to be sure, they are a desolation. But that
is not what God willed for the land."