"Ye maunna think, hooever, 'cause sic longin' thouchts come ower me, that I gang aboot the hoose girnin' and compleenin' that I canna open the door and win oot. Na, na. I could jist despise the licht, whiles, that ye mak' sic a wark aboot, and sing and shout, as the Psalmist says; for I'm jist that glaid, that I dinna ken hoo to haud it in. For the Lord's my frien'. I can jist tell him a' that comes into my puir blin' heid. Ye see there's ither ways for things to come intil a body's heid. There's mair doors nor the een. There's back doors, whiles, that lat ye oot to the bonnie gairden, and that's better nor the road-side. And the smell o' the braw flooers comes in at the back winnocks, ye ken.--Whilk o' the bonnie flooers do ye think likest _Him_, Annie Anderson?" "Eh! I dinna ken, Tibbie. I'm thinkin' they maun be a' like him." "Ay, ay, nae doobt. But some o' them may be liker him nor ithers." "Weel, whilk do _ye_ think likest him, Tibbie?" "I think it maun be the minnonette--sae clean and sae fine and sae weel content." "Ay, ye're speiken by the smell, Tibbie. But gin ye saw the rose--" "Hoots! I hae seen the rose mony a time. Nae doobt it's bonnier to luik at--" and here her fingers went moving about as if they were feeling the full-blown sphere of a rose--"but I think, for my pairt, that the minnonette's likest Him." "May be," was all Annie's reply, and Tibbie went on. "There maun be faces liker him nor ithers. Come here, Annie, and lat me fin (feel) whether ye be like him or no." "Hoo can ye ken that?--ye never saw him." "Never saw him! I hae seen him ower and ower again. I see him whan I like. Come here, I say." Annie went and knelt down beside her, and the blind woman passed her questioning fingers in solemn silence over and over the features of the child. At length, with her hands still resting upon Annie's head, she uttered her judgment. "Ay. Some like him, nae doot. But she'll be a heap liker him whan she sees him as he is." When a Christian proceeds to determine the rightness of his neighbour by his approximation to his fluctuating ideal, it were well if the judgment were tempered by such love as guided the hands of blind Tibbie over the face of Annie in their attempt to discover whether or not she was like the Christ of her visions. "Do ye think _ye_'re like him, Tibbie?" said Annie with a smile, which Tibbie at once detected in the tone. "Hoots, bairn! I had the pock dreidfu', ye ken." "Weel, maybe we a' hae had something or ither that hauds us ohn been sae bonny as we micht hae been. For ae thing, there's the guilt o' Adam's first sin, ye ken." "Verra richt, bairn. Nae doot that's blaudit mony a face--'the want o' original richteousness, and the corruption o' our whole natur'.' The wonner is that we're like him at a'. But we maun be like him, for he was a man born o' a wumman.' Think o' that, lass!"