e she
could read and pray alone. With windows open, how sweetly the spring
walked in there, and made it warm, and bright, and fragrant too. But
Nettie had a tenderness for her old garret as long as she lived.

"It had got to be full of the Bible, mother," she said one day. "You
know it was too cold often to sit up there; so I used to go to bed and
lie awake and think of things,--at night when the stars were
shining,--and in the morning in the moonlight sometimes."

"But how was the garret full of the Bible, Nettie?"

"Oh, I had a way of looking at some part of the roof or the window when
I was thinking; when I couldn't have the Bible in my hands."

"Well, how did that make it?"

"Why the words seemed to be all over, mother. There was one big nail I
used often to be looking at when I was thinking over texts, and a
knot-hole in one of the wainscot boards; my texts used to seem to go in
and out of that knot-hole. And somehow, mother, I got so that I hardly
ever opened the shutter without thinking of those words--'Open ye the
gates, that the righteous nation that keepeth the truth may enter in.'
I don't know why, but I used to think of it. And out of that window I
used to see the stars, and look at the golden city."

"Look at it!" said Mrs. Mathieson.

"In my thoughts, you know, mother. Oh, mother, how happy we are, that
are going to the city! It seems to me as if all that sunlight was a
curtain let down, and the city is just on the other side."

It was a lovely spring day, the windows open, and the country flooded
with a soft misty sunlight, through which the tender greens of the
opening leaf began to appear. Nettie was lying on the bed in her room,
her mother at work by her side. Mrs. Mathieson looked at her earnest
eyes, and then wistfully out of the window where they were gazing.

"What makes you think so much about it?" she said, at last.

"I don't know; I always do. I used to think about it last winter,
looking out at the stars. Why, mother, you know Jesus is there; how can
I help thinking about it?"

"He is here, too," murmured poor Mrs. Mathieson.

"Mother," said Nettie, tenderly, "aren't those good words,--'He hath not
despised nor abhorred the affliction of the afflicted, neither hath he
hid his face from him; but when he cried unto him, _he heard_?' I have
thought of those words, very often."

Nettie wished she could sing, for she had often seen singing comfort her
mother; but she had not the power