nurse said, then, there might be hope. Listen and hear,--what bright
hope there was, indeed!

They whispered to her, that soon her pain should cease, and that, for
her trust and patience, she should go to God's beautiful garden. They
showed her the fountains and the birds; they told her how she should
again ride upon the clouds, and study from the great books of God. Then
in her sleep she smiled, and the nurse, who was watching her face, wept
for joy, and exclaimed,

"There is hope! there is hope!"

Yes, there was hope!

When the little girl awoke, there was a more heavenly patience still,
in her soul, and a longing to meet the loving glances of the
angel-children again.

As the children wended their flight back to the gardens, and sat down
beneath the green trees, and ate of their delicious fruit, they strove
in vain to bring back the brightness to the face of the earth-baby.

"Ah, it would be so beautiful to stay with you!" he said. "I would like
always to comfort these afflicted ones; but, alas! I shall need comfort
myself, and you will come to me, as we have been to others. When I am on
the earth there seems something gone and lost, and what is before me is
confused and dim. I find myself so weak and helpless, when here I am so
sprightly and strong! I cannot move myself at all, and when I remember
these gardens I have left, and you with whom I have played, I can but
cry all the time! It looks cold and bleak there, as it never does here.
Then, should I grow up to be wicked, like those children we have seen,
and so go far away from heaven, how wretched should I become,--how much
better that I never had left these gardens!"

Thus he complained, and the other children were silent, for they knew
how they, too, at some time, must go down and try their fortunes upon
the earth; and, too, they sorrowed to lose their companion, for they
knew that soon he could not come to them any more;--and while they told
him, very eagerly, how they would come to watch over him, a soft tread
fell on their ears, and their dear teacher approached them.

Her hair floated in long curls upon the cool air, and her eyes were bent
down in sorrow upon the earth-child.

"Have you so soon forgotten the lessons you have learned from the book
of God?" she asked; and the tones of her voice were like the soft
harmonies of heaven. She held in her hand a book, along whose pages the
letters sparkled in the brightness of gold and silver. At the sigh