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ELIZABETH GOUDGE The Heart of the Family

NEW YORK

COWARD-McCANN, INC.

COPYRIGHT, 1953, BY ELIZABETH GOUDGE

All rights reserved. This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission from the publishers.

FOR C. I. C.

and all those who asked me to write a third book about the Eliots.

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 53-5302. Manufactured in the United States of America

VAN REES PRESS " NEW YORK

There lives the dearest freshness deep down things, And though the last lights off the black West went Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs- Because the Holy Ghost over the bent World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

GERARD MANLEY HOPKINS

THE HEART OF THE FAMILY



Chapter 1



MEG, wearing mackintosh boots and a red mackintosh, and with red sou'wester tied beneath her chin, splashed down the drive, and under the dripping oak trees, in a state of happiness deeper and more perfect than any other she was likely to know while she lived in this world. Had she known that she would never be happy in quite this way again she would not have been so happy, but she did not know. She was four years old, and much beloved, and regarded happiness as the normal state of everybody. She was not happy when her tummy ached or she had a cold in her head, or when her mother or father went away and left her, or when the black beast pounced; at such times the depth of her misery was quite appalling; but those awful times did not come very often, and in between were these long stretches of shining joy.