pression, which was the mixture of pity and
amusement, on Mrs Dorothy's lips. The amusement died away, but the
pity remained and grew deeper.

"Can you guess, Mrs Dolly?"

"`Lord, and what shall this man do?' You know the answer, Phoebe."

"Yes, I know: but-- Mrs Dorothy, would you not like to know the
future?"

"Certainly not, dear child. I am very thankful for the mist which my
Father hath cast as a veil over my eyes."

"But if you could see what would come, is it not very likely that there
would not be some things which you would be glad and relieved to find
absent?"

"Very likely. The things of which we stand especially in fear often
fail to come at all. But there would be other things, which I should be
very sorry to find, and much astonished too."

"I wonder sometimes, what will be in my life," said Phoebe, dreamily.

"That which thou needest," was the quiet answer.

"What do I need?" asked Phoebe.

"To have thy will moulded after God's will."

"Do you think I don't wish God's will to be done, Mrs Dorothy?"

Mrs Dorothy smiled. "I quite believe, dear child, thou art willing He
should have His way with respect to all the things thou dost not care
about."

"Mrs Dorothy!"

"My dear, that is what most folks call being resigned to the will of
God."

"Mrs Dolly, why do people always talk as though God's will must be
something dreadful? If somebody die, or if some accident happen, they
say, `Ah, 'tis God's will, and we must submit.' But when something
pleasant comes, they never say it then. Don't you think the pleasant
things are God's will, as well as the disagreeable ones?"

"More so, Phoebe. `In all our affliction, He is afflicted.' `He doth
not afflict willingly, nor grieve the children of men.' Pleasant things
are what He loves to give us; bitter things, what He needs must."

"Then why do people talk so?" repeated Phoebe.

"Ah, why do they?" said Mrs Dorothy. "Man is always wronging God. Not
one of us all is so cruelly misunderstood of his fellows as all of us
misunderstand Him."

"Yet He forgives," said Phoebe softly: "and sometimes we don't."

"He is always forgiving, Phoebe. The inscription is graven not less
over the throne in Heaven than over the cross on earth,--`This Man
receiveth sinners.'"

There was a pause of some minutes; and as Phoebe rose to go, Mrs
Dorothy said,--

"I will tell you one thing I have noted, child, as I have gone through
life. Very often ther