THERE HAD NEVER been a crisis in the Mindal family before.
Everything was shaped by joy. The business flourished beyond all hopes for there was an attractiveness about the place, especially when that little girl, Vetta, came running in to tell breathless tales of happiness witnessed or participated in.
Customers crowded the shop just to get a glimpse of the sprightly little spirit as she brought a glow of joy to her surroundings.
'Oh papa, there was such a beautiful cloud just now, gracing the sky with a big bright whiteness tinged with rainbows. I clutched myself as I watched it and wondered where it might bless the land with refreshing rain, so pure and cleansing.'
'A cloud,' the man replied with a booming laugh as he sat at his desk doing accounts. His blue-clad employees were the ones on the counter now, blue-clad for the colour was a gladsome one to his way of thinking. His wife, Vetta's mother, merely drifted in now and then to polish metalwork for the mere sake of it. How she loved to see things shine. It was obviously where little Vetta got her enthusiasms from.
'Yes papa, it drifted over to Pulverin so I waved it on its way.'
'Summer rains are a blessing at times my dear little Vettal Petal,' the man said thoughtfully. 'If joy does not come to us then the next best thing is it blesses others, be they friends or strangers.'
'Papa, there are no strangers,' Vetta reminded her father seriously. This elicited another booming laugh from the big man.
'Child, you are right. I thank you for teaching me this.'
The girl seemed delighted.
'Education is one of the five wellsprings of joy,' she said happily.
Her mother had come in just then, seeking brass fitments to rub. She paused on the threshold of an inner door and her eyes fixed upon that of her husband. His smile froze. He kept it there, for the sake of their daughter and as she wandered about the outer office in search of impossible joy he took himself off, taking Grayta with him.
Several rooms away they paused, alone in a quiet distant space. And then the tears flowed.
'There, there,' the man said, soft rumblings that soothed his tearful wife. 'You know it's right, you know it is.'
'Why did that strange man have to cross our threshold?' the woman asked.
'You have answered your own question my dear, because he had to. He had no choice. It was a good thing he did according to his lights and must suffer no blame for what he brought us.'
'He brought us pain.'
'He brought us a future, a special, glowing, bright future so very different from that till then we had envisioned for ourselves.'
'And for our daughter.'
There was a long, quiet pause as the couple embraced, soothing each other for though the man suppressed his own emotions it took a mighty effort and his wife knew he shared her grief.
'A world there is,' he eventually said, stroking his wife's bright hair, the same as their daughter lit up a room with, 'a world out there beyond our little houses and streets and canals, a world as much deserving of joy as we do. There is no shame in holding onto lovely things, but there is a joy also in sharing. This is what that man brought us, that wonderful, generous, thoughtful man. He may not have been fond of cheese, but he was besotted with kindness for all his fellow creatures and we can but learn from him and do right by the world.'
'She is such an innocent little thing,' Grayta Mindal protested.
'Exactly so. She is just what the world is crying out for.'
This time his tears did flow, but somewhere deep within his soul he knew they were tears that could only come from that most precious inspiration of all, the fifth wellspring of joy.