"Waldo," she said at last, "Gregory has given me the money he got for the
wagon and oxen, and I have fifty pounds besides that once belonged to some
one. I know what they would have liked to have done with it. You must
take it and go to some place and study for a year or two."
"No, little one, I will not take it," he said, as he planed slowly away;
"the time was when I would have been very grateful to any one who would
have given me a little money, a little help, a little power of gaining
knowledge. But now, I have gone so far alone I may go on to the end. I
don't want it, little one."
She did not seem pained at his refusal, but swung her foot to and fro, the
little old wrinkled forehead more wrinkled up than ever.
"Why is it always so, Waldo, always so?" she said; "we long for things, and
long for them, and pray for them; we would give all we have to come near to
them, but we never reach them. Then at last, too late, just when we don't
want them any more, when all the sweetness is taken out of them, then they
come. We don't want them then," she said, folding their hands resignedly
on her little apron. After a while she added: "I remember once, very long
ago, when I was a very little girl, my mother had a workbox full of
coloured reels. I always wanted to play with them, but she would never let
me.
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