than that," I said; "things that
one wishes for, which are not necessaries for the body, and yet are not
things for the soul."

"Necessaries for the mind?" suggested Lady Monksburn. "My dear, your
mind is a part of you as much as your body and spirit. And `He careth
for you,' body, soul, and spirit--not the spirit only, and not the
spirit and body only."

"For instance," I said, "suppose I wanted very much to go somewhere, or
not to go somewhere--for reasons which seemed good ones to me--would it
be wicked to ask God to arrange it so?"

Lady Monksburn looked up at me with her gentle, motherly eyes.

"Dear child," she said, "you may ask God for anything in all the world,
if only you will bear in mind that He loves you, and is wiser than you.
`Father, if it be possible,--nevertheless, not My will, but Thine, be
done.' You cannot ask a more impossible thing than that which lay
between those words. If the world were to be saved, if God were to be
glorified, it was not possible. Did He not know that who asked it with
strong crying and tears? Was not the asking done to teach us two
things--that He was very man, like ourselves, shrinking from pain and
death as much as the very weakest of us can shrink, and also that we may
ask anything and everything, if only we desire beyond it that God's will
be done?"

"Thank you," I said, drawing a long breath. Yes, I might ask my second
question.

"Lady Monksburn, what is it to trust the Lord Jesus?"

"Do you want to know what trust is, Cary,--or what He is? My child, I
think I can tell you the first, but I can never attempt to paint the
glory of the second."

"_I_ want to know what people mean by _trusting_ Him. How are you to
trust somebody whom you do not know?"

"It is hard. I think you must know a little before you can trust. And
by the process of trusting you learn to know. Trust and love are very
near akin. You must talk with Him, Cary, if you want to know Him."

"You mean, pray, I suppose?"

"That is talking to Him. It is a poor converse where all the talk is on
one side."

"But what is the other side--reading the Bible?"

"That is part of it."

"What is the other part of it?"

Lady Monksburn looked up at me again, with a smile which I do not know
how to describe. I can only say that it filled me with a sudden
yearning for my dead mother. She might have smiled on me like that.

"My darling!" she answered, "there are things which can be describe