all had been
silent a short while, out came I with my question, well-nigh ere I
myself wist it were out--

"_Father_, are you satisfied?"

"A mighty question, my maid," saith he,--while _Helen_ looked up in
surprise, and Aunt _Joyce_ and Mistress _Martin_ and _Milisent_ fell
a-laughing. "With what? The past, the present, or the future?" quoth
_Father_.

"With things, _Father_," said I. "With life and every thing."

"Ah, _Edith_, hast thou come to that?" saith my Lady _Stafford_: and she
exchanged smiles with _Mother_.

"_Daughter_," _Father_ makes answer, "methinks no man is ever satisfied
with life, until he be first satisfied with God. The furthest he can go
in that direction, is not to think if he be satisfied or no. A man may
be well pleased with lesser things: but to be satisfied, that can he
not."

"`Whosoever drinketh of this water shall thirst again,'" quoth _Mother_,
softly.

"Ay," saith Sir _Robert_; "and wit you, Mistress _Edith_, what cometh at
times to men adrift of the ocean, when all their fresh water is spent?"

"Why, surely, they should find water in plenty in the sea, Sir," said I.

"Right so do they," saith he: "and 'tis a quality of the sea-water, that
if a man athirst doth once taste the same, his thirst becometh so great
that he drinketh thereof again and again, the thirst worsening with
every draught, until at last it drives him mad."

"An apt image of the pleasures of this world," answers _Father_. "Ah,
how is all nature as God's picture-book, given to help His dull childer
over their tasks!"

"But, _Father_,"--said I, and stayed.

"Well, my maid?" he answers of his kindly fashion.

"I cry you mercy, _Father_, if I speak foolishly; but it seems me that
pious folk be not alway satisfied. They make as much fume as other folk
when things go as they would not have them."

"The angels do not so, I reckon," saith _Mynheer_, a-looking up.

"We are not angels yet," quoth _Father_, a little drily. "Truth, my
maid: and we ought to repent thereof, seeing such practices but too oft
cause the enemy to blaspheme, and put stumbling-blocks in the way of
weak brethren. Ay, and from what we read in God's Word, it should seem
as though all murmuring and repining--not sorrowing, mark thou; but
murmuring--went for far heavier sin in His eyes than it doth commonly in
ours. We count it a light matter if we grumble when things go awry, and
matters do seem as if they were bent on turning for