A Daughter of the Land

When he had gone Kate knelt on the floor, laid her head on the

chair tray, and putting her arms around the baby she laughed and

cried at the same time, while Miss Baby pulled her hair, patted

her face, and plastered it with wet, uncertain kisses. Then Kate

tied a little bonnet on the baby's head and taking her in her

arms, she went to the field to tell Adam. It seemed to Kate that

she could see responsibility slipping from his shoulders, could

see him grow taller as he listened. The breath of relief he drew

was long and deep.

"Fine!" he cried. "Fine! I haven't told you HALF I knew. I've

been worried until I couldn't sleep."

Kate went back to the house so glad she did not realize she was

touching earth at all. She fed the baby and laid her down for her

morning nap, and then went out in the garden; but she was too

restless to work. She walked bareheaded in the sun and was glad

as she never before in her life had known how to be glad. The

first thing Kate knew she was standing at the gate looking up at

the noonday sky and from the depths of her heart she was crying

aloud: "Praise ye the Lord, Oh my soul. Let all that is within

me praise His holy name!"

For the remainder of the day Kate was unblushingly insane. She

started to do a hundred things and abandoned all of them to go out

and look up at the sky and to cry repeatedly: "Praise the Lord!"

If she had been asked to explain why she did this, Kate could have

answered, and would have answered: "Because I FEEL like it!" She

had been taught no religion as a child, she had practised no

formal mode of worship as a woman. She had been straight, honest,

and virtuous. She had faced life and done with small question the

work that she thought fell to her hand. She had accepted joy,

sorrow, shame, all in the same stoic way. Always she had felt

that there was a mighty force in the universe that could as well

be called God as any other name; it mattered not about the name;

it was a real force, and it was there.

That day Kate exulted. She carried the baby down to the brook in

the afternoon and almost shouted; she sang until she could have

been heard a mile. She kept straight on praising the Lord,

because expression was imperative, and that was the form of

expression that seemed to come naturally to her. Without giving a

thought as to how, or why, she followed her impulses and praised

the Lord. The happier she grew, the more clearly she saw how

uneasy and frightened she had been.