At this statement Elly could feel her thoughts getting bigger and longer
and higher, like something being opened out. "And the heaven was removed
as a scroll when it is rolled up." That sentence she'd heard in church
and never understood, and always wondered what was behind, what they had
seen when the scroll was rolled up. . . . Something inside her now seemed
to roll up as though she were going to see what was behind it. How much
longer time was than you thought! Mother had sat there as a little girl
. . . a little girl like her. Mother who was now grown-up and _finished_,
knowing everything, never changing, never making any mistakes. Why, how
_could_ she have been a little girl! And such a short time ago that Aunt
Hetty remembered her sitting there, right there, maybe come in from
walking across that very meadow, and down those very rocks. _What had
she been thinking about, that other little girl who had been Mother?_
"Why" . . . Elly stopped eating, stopped breathing for a moment. "Why, she
herself would stop being a little girl, and would grow up and be a
Mother!" She had always known that, of course, but she had never _felt_
it till that moment. It made her feel very sober; more than sober,
rather holy. Yes, that was the word,--holy,--like the hymn. Perhaps some
day another little girl would sit there, and be just as surprised to
know that _her_ mother had been really and truly a little girl too, and
would feel queer and shy at the idea, and all the time her mother had
been only _Elly_. But would she _be_ Elly any more, when she was grown
up? What would have happened to Elly? And after that little girl,
another; and one before Mother; and back as far as you could see, and
forwards as far as you could see. It was like a procession, all half in
the dark, marching forward, one after another, little girls, mothers,
mothers and little girls, and then more . . . what for . . . oh, _what
for?_

She was a little scared. She wished she could get right up and go _home_