it is, we can speak of it
with some hope of being understood."

"Has anything special come to the Dominie?" Mrs. Starling asked that
evening, when after prayers the minister had gone to his study.

"Why, mother?"

"He seems to have a great deal of thanksgiving on his mind!"

"That's nothing very uncommon in him," said Diana, smiling.

"What's happened to _you?_" inquired her mother next, eyeing her
daughter with curious eyes.

"Why do you ask?"

"I don't do things commonly without a reason. When folks roll their
words out like butter, I like to know what's to pay."

"I cannot imagine what manner of speech that can be," said Diana,
amused.

"Well--it was your'n just now. And it was your husband's half an hour
ago."

"I suppose," said Diana, gravely now, "that when people feel happy, it
makes their speech flow smoothly."

"And you feel happy?" said Mrs. Starling with a look as sharp as an
arrow.

"Yes, mother. I do."

"What about?"

Diana hesitated, and then answered with a kind of sweet
solemnity,--"All earth, and all heaven."

Mrs. Starling was silenced for a minute.

"By 'all earth' I suppose you mean me to understand things in the
future?"

"And things in the past. Everything that ever happened to me, mother,
has turned out for good."

Mrs. Starling looked at her daughter, and saw that she meant it.

"The ways o' the world," she muttered scornfully, "are too queer for
anything!" But Diana let the imputation lie.

They went to Mainbridge. Not Mrs. Starling, but the others. And you may
think of them as happy, with both hands full of work. They live in a
house just a little bit out of the town, where there is plenty of
ground for gardens, and the air is not poisoned with smoke or vapour.
Roses and honeysuckles flourish as well here as in Pleasant Valley;
laburnums are here too, dropping fresh gold every year; and there are
banks of violets and beds of lilies, and in the spring-time crocuses
and primroses and hyacinths and snowdrops; and chrysanthemums and
asters, and all sorts of splendours and sweetnesses in the fall. For
even Diana's flowers are not for herself alone, nor even for her
children alone, whose special pleasure in connection with them is to
make nosegays for sick and poor people, and to cultivate garden plots
in order to have the more to give away. And not Diana's roses and
honeysuckles are sweeter than the fragrance of her life which goes
through all Mainbridge. Rich a