aid, taking the letter
from her father's hand.

"I should think she'd hate Lockhaven," Dick went on. "I was there once
for a day or two. It is a poor little place; lots of poverty among the
hands. And it is awfully unpleasant to see that sort of thing. I've heard
fellows say they enjoyed a good dinner more if they saw some poor beggar
going without. Now, I don't feel that way. I don't like to see such
things; they distress me, and I don't forget them."

Lois, reading Helen's letter, which was full of grief for the helpless
trouble she saw in Lockhaven, thought that Mr. Forsythe had a very tender
heart. Helen was questioning the meaning of the suffering about her;
already the problem as old as life itself confronted her, and she asked,
Why?

Dr. Howe had noticed this tendency in some of her later letters, and
scarcely knew whether to be annoyed or amused by it. "Now what in the
world," he said, as Lois handed back the letter,--"what in the world does
the child mean by asking me if I don't think--stay, where is that
sentence?" The rector fumbled for his glasses, and, with his lower lip
thrust out, and his gray eyebrows gathered into a frown, glanced up and
down the pages. "Ah, yes, here: 'Do you not think,' she says, 'that the
presence in the world of suffering which cannot produce character,
irresponsible suffering, so to speak, makes it hard to believe in the
personal care of God?' It's perfect nonsense for Helen to talk in that
way! What does she know about 'character' and 'irresponsible suffering'?
I shall tell her to mend her husband's stockings, and not bother her
little head with theological questions that are too big for her."

"Yes, sir," Lois answered, carefully snipping off the thorns on the
stem of a rose before she plunged it down into the water in the big
punch-bowl; "but people cannot help just wondering sometimes."

"Now, Lois, don't you begin to talk that way," the rector cried
impatiently; "one in a family is enough!"

"Well," said Dick Forsythe gayly, "what's the good of bothering about
things you can't understand?"

"Exactly," the rector answered. "Be good! if we occupy our minds with
conduct, we won't have room for speculation, which never made a soul
better or happier, anyhow. Yes, it's all nonsense, and I shall tell Helen
so; there is too much tendency among young people to talk about things
they don't understand, and it results in a superficial, skin-deep sort of
skepticism that I despise!