stand. I will tell you. You know the story of
Joseph. Well, when his brothers tried to murder him, that was what you
call evil, wasn't it?"

"Black, and no moonshine on it."

"Yet it led to his being sold into Egypt."

"What was the moonshine on that? He was a slave, warn't he?"

"But that brought him to be governor of Egypt; he was the means of the
plenty in the land through those years of famine; and by his power and
influence his family was placed in the best of the land when starvation
drove them down there."

"But why must he be sold a slave to begin with?"

"Good reasons. As a servant of Potiphar he learned to know all about
the land and its produce and its cultivation, and the peasant people
that cultivated it. If it had not been for the knowledge he gained as a
slave, Joseph could never have known what to do as a governor."

"I never thought of that," said Rupert, his tone changing.

"Then when he was thrown into prison, _you_ would have said that was a
black experience too?"

"I should, and no mistake."

"And there, among the great prisoners of state, he learned to know
about the politics of the country, and heard what he never could have
heard talked about anywhere else; and there, by interpreting their
dreams, he recommended himself to the high officers of Pharaoh. Except
through the prison, it is impossible to see how he, a poor foreigner,
could ever have come to be so distinguished at the king's court; for
the Egyptians hated and despised foreigners."

"I'll be whipped if that ain't a good sermon," said Rupert drily; "and
what's more, I can understand it, which I can't most sermons I've
heard. But look here,--do you think God takes the same sort of look-out
for common folks? Joseph was Joseph."

"The care comes of His goodness, not out of our worthiness," said
Dolly, the tears dripping from her eyes. "To Him, Dolly is Dolly, and
Rupert is Rupert, just as truly. I know it, and yet I am so ungrateful!"

"But tell me, then," Rupert went on, "how comes it that God, who can do
everything, does not make people good right off? Half the trouble in
the world comes of folks' wrong-headedness; why don't He make 'em
reasonable?"

"He tries to make them reasonable."

"_Tries!_ Why don't He do it?"

"You, for instance," said Dolly--"because He has given you the power of
choice, Rupert; and you know yourself that obedience would not be
obedience if it were not voluntary."

On this theological nut Rup