But she concluded at last that for the present there were many perplexities which must remain perplexities till that wonderful time when she would be a woman, and everything made clear to her. Experiences, too, had shown her that a troublesome question of Monday often had resolved itself by Wednesday. So she went contentedly on her way.
On a morning following Suzanna's talk with the Eagle Man, Mrs. Procter and all the children except the baby who was taking his early morning nap upstairs, were in the kitchen busy at their tasks, Suzanna polishing the stove, and Maizie peeling the potatoes for supper, a task Mrs. Procter insisted upon being performed early in the day. Peter, exempted, because of his sex, from household duties--and very unfair this exemption Suzanna thought privately--was trying his awkward best to mend a baseball. Maizie broke a rather long silence.
Mrs. Procter looked up from her kneading.
No one spoke. Maizie, engaged in peeling a large potato, went on quite unconscious of the variant expressions pictured in the faces of her audience: "He's always so sad in our Sunday School lessons, mother. Even when He said, 'Suffer little children to come unto me,' He didn't smile--or they never say so when they read the chapter," she finished.
Mrs. Procter looked helplessly at Suzanna. And Suzanna rose to the occasion. "Maizie," she said, "you know Jesus was born in a manger so His mother didn't have much money and it was hard to make both ends meet. And, besides, there wasn't anything to smile about in those days when the world was so fresh."
"I guess that's right," Mrs. Procter agreed. "What with going round and trying to persuade people to be good and understand what He was trying to tell them, there couldn't have been much excuse for smiling."
Maizie, however, was tenacious. "Mother, you know at times even when things have all gone wrong you've laughed at something the baby did," she said looking up from her work.
"Yes, I know," put in Suzanna, as though Maizie had spoken to her. "But mother doesn't have to go round turning water into wine and doing lots of other wonderful things."
"Well, I wish He had smiled," Maizie persisted.
Suzanna looked searchingly at her sister. "Why do you wish that, Maizie?" she asked.