"No, it isn't," said my Aunt Kezia, "for people who spend all their time
hunting for it. It is a deal better to let happiness hunt for you. You
don't go the right way to get it, child."

"I do not, indeed!" answered Cecilia, with a very sorrowful look. "Ah,
Mrs Kezia, `the heart knoweth his own bitterness.' That is Scripture,
I believe."

"Yes, it does," said my aunt, "and it makes a deal of it, too."

"Oh dear, Mrs Kezia!" cried Cecilia. "How could anybody make
unhappiness?"

"If you don't, you are the first girl I have met of your sort," saith my
Aunt Kezia, turning down the hem of a kerchief. Then, when she came to
the end of the hem, she looked up at Cecilia. "My dear, there is a
lesson we all have to learn, and the sooner you learn it, the better and
happier woman you will be. The end of selfishness is not pleasure, but
pain. You don't think so, do you? Ah, but you will find as you go
through life, that always you are not only better, but happier, with
God's blessing on the thing you don't like, than without it on the thing
you do. Ay, it always turns to ashes in your mouth when you will have
the quails instead of the manna. I've noted many a time--for when I was
a girl, and later than that, I was as self-willed as any of you--that
sometimes when I have set my heart upon a thing, and would have it,
then, if I may speak it with reverence, God has given way to me. Like a
father with an obstinate child, He has said to me, as it were, `Poor
foolish child! You will have this glittering piece of mischief. Well,
have your way: and when you have cut yourself badly with it, and are
bleeding and smarting as I did not wish to see you, come back to your
Father and tell Him all about it, and be healed and comforted.' Ah dear
me, the dullest of us is quite as clever as she need be in making rods
for her own back. And then, if our Father keep us from hurting
ourselves, and won't let us have the bright knife to cut our fingers
with, how we do mewl and whine, to be sure! We are just a set of silly
babes, my dear--the best of us."

"My Aunt Dorothea once told me," said I, "that the Papists have what
they call `exercises of detachment.' Perhaps you would think them good
things, Aunt Kezia. For instance, if an abbess sees a nun who seems to
have a fancy for any little thing particularly, she will take it from
her and give it to somebody else."

"Eh, poor foolish things!" said Aunt Kezia. "Bits of children p