she smiled--"do you think that these people
were without a heavenly Parent?"

"O no! But were they all patient?"

"Yes, in their different ways and degrees. Would you say that they were
hardly treated? Or would you rather suppose that their Father gave them
something more and better to do than they had planned for themselves?"

"He must know best, of course: but it does seem hard that that very
thing should happen to them. Huber would not have so much minded being
deaf, perhaps; or that musical man being blind; or Richard Grant losing
his foot, instead of his hand: for he did not want to go round the
world."

"No doubt their hearts often swelled within them at their
disappointments: but I fully believe that they found very soon that
God's will was wiser than their wishes. They found, if they bore their
trial well, that there was work for their hearts to do, far nobler than
any work that the head can do through the eye, and the ear, and the
hand. And they soon felt a new and delicious pleasure, which none but
the bitterly disappointed can feel."

"What is that?"

"The pleasure of rousing their souls to bear pain, and of agreeing with
God silently, when nobody knows what is in their hearts. There is a
great pleasure in the exercise of the body,--in making the heart beat,
and the limbs glow, in a run by the sea-side, or a game in the
playground; but this is nothing to the pleasure there is in exercising
one's soul in bearing pain,--in finding one's heart glow with the hope
that one is pleasing God."

"Shall I feel that pleasure?"

"Often and often, I have no doubt,--every time that you can willingly
give up your wish to be a soldier or a sailor,--or anything else that
you have set your mind upon, if you can smile to yourself, and say that
you will be content at home.--Well, I don't expect it of you yet. I
dare say it was long a bitter thing to Beethoven to see hundreds of
people in raptures with his music, when he could not hear a note of it.
And Huber--"

"But did Beethoven get to smile?"

"If he did, he was happier than all the fine music in the world could
have made him."

"I wonder--O! I wonder if I ever shall feel so."

"We will pray to God that you may. Shall we ask Him now?"

Hugh clasped his hands. His mother kneeled beside the bed, and, in a
very few words, prayed that Hugh might be able to bear his misfortune
well, and that his friends might give him such help and comfort as God
shou