Olive by Dinah Mulock — Read

It was again the season of late summer; and Time's soothing shadow had risen up between the daughter and her grief. The grave in the beautiful churchyard of Har-bury was bright with many months' growth of grass and flowers. It never looked dreary -- nay, often seemed almost to smile. It was watered by no tears -- it never had been. Those which Olive shed were only for her own loneliness, and at times she felt that even these were wrong. Many people, seeing how calm she was, and how, after a season, she fell into her old pursuits and her kindly duties to all around, used to say, "Who would have thought that Miss Rothesay would have forgotten her mother so easily?"

But _she did not forget_. Selfish, worldly mourners are they, who think that the memory of the beloved lost can only be kept green by tears. Olive Rothesay was not of these. To her, her mother's departure appeared no more like death, than did one Divine parting -- with reverence be it spoken! -- appear to those who stood and looked upward from the hill of Bethany. And thus should we think upon all happy and holy deaths -- if we fully and truly believed the faith we own.