I have been, Joseph? An inarticulate harmony--sweetly
mumbling, with never a thread of soaring song!"

A pause followed.

"I shall be rather shy of your father, Mary," said Joseph. "Perhaps he
won't be content with me."

"Even if you weren't what you are, my father would love you because I
love you. But I know my father as well as I know you; and I know you
are just the man it must make him happy afresh, even in heaven, to
think of his Mary marrying. You two can hardly be of two minds in
anything!"

"That was a curious speech of Letty's yesterday! You heard her say, did
you not, that, if everybody was to be so very good in heaven, she was
afraid it would be rather dull?"

"We mustn't make too much of what Letty says, either when she's merry
or when she's miserable. She speaks both times only out of half-way
down."

"Yes, yes! I wasn't meaning to find any fault with her; I was only
wishing to hear what you would say. For nobody can make a story without
somebody wicked enough to set things wrong in it, and then all the work
lies in setting them right again, and, as soon as they are set right,
then the story stops."

"There's no thing of the sort in music, Joseph, and that makes one
happy enough."

"Yes, there is, Mary. There's strife and difference and compensation
and atonement and reconciliation."

"But there's nothing wicked."

"No, that there is not."

"Well!" said Mary, "perhaps it may only be because we know so little
about good, that it seems to us not enough. We know only the beginnings
and the fightings, and so write and talk only about them. For my part,
I don't feel that strife of any sort is necessary to make me enjoy
life; of all things it is what makes me miserable. I grant you that
effort and struggle add immeasurably to the enjoyment of life, but
those I look upon as labor, not strife. There may be whole worlds for
us to help bring into order and obedience. And I suspect there must be
no end of work in which is strife enough--and that of a kind hard to
bear. There must be millions of spirits in prison that want preaching
to; and whoever goes among them will have that which is behind of the
afflictions of Christ to fill up. Anyhow there will be plenty to do,
and that's the main thing. Seeing we are made in the image of God, and
he is always working, we could not be happy without work."

"Do you think we shall get into any company we like up there?" said
Joseph. "I must think a minute. When