t tone, she wants a chat with me, and she means to inquire
deprecatingly if she may have it.

"Come in, darling," I said.

Since Father Mortimer gave me leave to love any one, any how, so long as
I put God first, I thought I might say "darling" to Margaret. She
smiled,--I fancied she looked a little surprised--and coming forward,
she knelt down at my feet, in her favourite attitude, and laid her
clasped hands in my lap.

"Is there some trouble, Margaret?"

"No, dear Annora. Only little worries which make one feel tired out:
nothing to be properly called trouble. I am working under Mother Ada
this week, and--well, you know what she is. I do not wish to speak evil
of any one: only--sometimes, one feels tired. So I thought it would
help me to have a little talk with my sister Annora. Art thou weary
too?"

"I think I am rested, dear," said I. "Father Mortimer has given me a
word of counsel from Holy Writ, and it hath done me good."

"He hath given me many an one," she saith, with a smile that seemed half
pleasure and half pain. "And I am trying to live by the light of the
last I had--I know not if the words were Holy Writ or no, but I think
the substance was--`If Christ possess thee, then shalt thou inherit all
things.'"

She was silent for a moment, with a look of far-away thought: and I was
thinking that a hundred little worries might be as wearying and wearing
as one greater trouble. Suddenly Margaret looked up with a laugh for
which her eyes apologised.

"I could not help thinking," she said, "that I hope `all things' have a
limit. To inherit Mother Ada's temper would scarcely be a boon!"

"All good things," said I.

"Yes, all good things," she answered. "That must mean, all things that
our Lord sees good for us--which may not be those that we see good for
ourselves. But one thing we know--that if we be His, that must be,
first of all, Himself--He with us here, we with Him hereafter. And next
to that comes the promise that they which are Christ's, with whom we
have to part here, will be brought home with us when He cometh. There
is no restriction on the companying of the Father's children, when they
are gathered together in the Father's House."

I knew what she saw. And I saw the dear grey eyes of my child Joan; but
behind them, other eyes that mine have not beheld for fifty years, and
that I shall see next--and then for ever--in the light of the Golden
City. Softly I said--[Note 8.]

"