The knowing ones said this light-heartedness was put on--a mere bluff to make others think they did not value money. As a matter of fact it was not. They had simply forgotten all about their financial troubles in the engrossing pleasures of the hour. This enviable faculty for enjoying the present moment, unclouded by past or future shadows was largely responsible for their joyous lives. For them there was only the now. They never reasoned or philosophized about it, but just lived that way by nature. “Wait till they have a hand-to-hand fight with Poverty,” said the knowing ones, who are often the cruel ones. “Wait till he writes his name on their clothes, their faces and their thoughts. Wait till he walks with them, sits with them, eats with them and never leaves them for an instant! Wait!” They said this in a way that made their hearers understand the waiting would not require patience. Kinder ones sighed and said the Joys, poor souls, laughed at poverty, because they didn’t know its horrors. But they were destined to better acquaintance with the dreaded spectre. Meantime they went their way rejoicing that affairs were no worse. Lilla was so full of what she had learned through Chrissalyn of the deathlessness of herself and fellow beings, that she bubbled over like a kettle filled to the brim and boiling. What was loss of money and a contest with poverty to one who knew that Death was dead? This knowledge was of a character too fermentative to remain bottled up within her. She went around talking of it, unmindful of the injunction not to cast pearls before swine. An enthusiast by nature, and endowed with power to carry conviction to an extraordinary degree, it is strange she did not succeed in the propaganda; but she did not. On the contrary the swine turned upon her and she was rended, like other prophets who have been guilty of similar indiscretion. To each other some of the swine said: “Poor Lilla Joy. Burton’s failure has upset her after all. Talks about nothing but souls. Thinks she has had proof of dead folks being alive. It’s too bad.” But Lilla refused to be cast down. After a time she gave up the hopeless work of letting her light shine too far, it is true, but she kept her strangely happy face and joyous ways--kept them through many a dark day, on many a stony road--kept them to the end. She met all things, troublous or pleasant, as Socrates said he wished to meet the gods--with a bright face. This never-changing brightness made an impression on everybody who beheld it. One might feebly describe it by saying that her soul seemed too large and too happy for its mortal measure, and was always running over. Perhaps the office boy of the _Register_ hit it most felicitously, when he thus described her to Cartice, who had been out, when she called one day: “It was that lady who comes often and always looks as if she had just heard good news.” Mrs. Doring recognized the word photograph of Lilla Joy at once.