I think, if I felt certain that the bottom was not very deep, and
there was only a rock to be seen now and then, I should not find it so
very dreadful."
Eve laughed like a child, and the contrast between the sweet simplicity of
her looks, her manners, and her more cultivated intellect, and the
matronly appearance of the less instructed Ann, made one of those pictures
in which the superiority of mind over all other things becomes
most apparent.
"Your notions of safety, my dear Nanny," she said, "are not precisely
those of a seaman; for I believe there is nothing of which they stand more
in dread than of rocks and the bottom."
"I fear I'm but a poor sailor, ma'am, for in my judgment we could have no
greater consolation in such a tempest than to see them all around us. Do
you think, Miss Eve, that the bottom of the ocean, if there is truly a
bottom, is whitened with the bones of shipwrecked mariners, as
people say?"
"I doubt not, my excellent Nanny, that the great deep might give up many
awful secrets; but you ought to think less of these things, and more of
that merciful Providence which has protected us through so many dangers
since we have been wanderers. You are in much less danger now than I have
known you to be, and escape unharmed."
"I, Miss Eve!--Do you suppose that I fear for myself? What matters it if a
poor old woman like me die a few years sooner or later or where her frail
old body is laid? I have never been of so much account when living as to
make it of consequence where the little which will remain to decay when
dead moulders into dust.
Pages:
210
211
212
213
214
215
216
217
218
219
220
221
222
223
224
225
226
227
228
229
230
231
232
233
234