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Writer's pictureLinda Odhner, with photos by Liz Kufs
Aug 30, 20230 min read

Excerpted Inspirations #92


“Mother,” said Elly, coming up close to Marise, as she stood unpacking the dishes, “I was looking inside that old diary, the one in the red leather cover, your grandmother’s, I guess, the diary she wrote when she was a young lady. And she was having a perfectly dreadful time whether she could believe the Doctrine of the Trinity. She seemed to feel so bad about it. She wrote how she couldn’t sleep nights, and cried, and everything. It was the Holy Ghost she couldn’t make any sense out of. Mother, what in the world is the Doctrine of the Trinity?” “For mercy’s sakes!” cried Cousin Hetty. “I never saw such a family! Elly, what won’t you be up to next? I can’t call that a proper thing for a little girl to talk about, right out, so.” “Mother, you tell me,” said Elly, looking up into her mother’s face with the expression of tranquil trust which was like a visible radiance. Marise always felt scared, she told herself, when Elly looked at her like that. She made a little helpless shrugged gesture of surrender with her shoulders, setting down on the table a plate of cold sliced lamb. “Elly, darling, I can’t stop just this minute to tell you about it, and anyway I don’t understand it any more than Grandmother did. But I don’t care if I don’t. The first quiet minute we have together, I’ll tell you enough so you’ll understand why she cared.” “All right, when I go to bed tonight, I’ll remind you to,” Elly made the engagement definite. Dorothy Canfield, The Brimming Cup (1919), p. 151

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