“But I can’t help thinking, sir, that I wouldn’t be troublesome. He has such a deal to look after! And I don’t see how He can think of everybody, at every minute, like. I don’t mean that He will let anything go wrong. But He might forget an old body like me for a minute, like.” “You would need to be as wise as He is before you could see how He does it. But you must believe more than you can understand. It is only common sense to do so. Think how nonsensical it would be to suppose that one who could make everything, and keep the whole going as He does, shouldn’t be able to help forgetting. It would be unreasonable to think that He must forget because you couldn’t understand how He could remember. I think it is as hard for Him to forget anything as it is for us to remember everything; for forgetting comes of weakness, and from our not being finished yet, and He is all strength and all perfection.” “Then you think, sir, He never forgets anything?” I knew by the trouble that gathered on the old woman’s brow what kind of thought was passing through her mind. But I let her go on, thinking so to help her the better. She paused for one moment only, and then resumed—much interrupted by the shortness of her breathing. “When I was brought to bed first,” she said, “it was o’ twins, sir. And oh! sir, it was VERY hard. As I said to my man after I got my head up a bit, ‘Tomkins,’ says I, ‘you don’t know what it is to have TWO on ’em cryin’ and cryin’, and you next to nothin’ to give ’em; till their cryin’ sticks to your brain, and ye hear ’em when they’re fast asleep, one on each side o’ you.’ Well, sir, I’m ashamed to confess it even to you; and what the Lord can think of me, I don’t know.” “I would rather confess to Him than to the best friend I ever had,” I said; “I am so sure that He will make every excuse for me that ought to be made. And a friend can’t always do that. He can’t know all about it. And you can’t tell him all, because you don’t know all yourself. He does.” “But I would like to tell YOU, sir. Would you believe it, sir, I wished ’em dead? Just to get the wailin’ of them out o’ my head, I wished ’em dead. In the courtyard o’ the squire’s house, where my Tomkins worked on the home-farm, there was an old draw-well. It wasn’t used, and there was a lid to it, with a hole in it, through which you could put a good big stone. And Tomkins once took me to it, and, without tellin’ me what it was, he put a stone in, and told me to hearken. And I hearkened, but I heard nothing,—as I told him so. ‘But,’ says he, ‘hearken, lass.’ And in a little while there come a blast o’ noise like from somewheres. ‘What’s that, Tomkins?’ I said. ‘That’s the ston’,’ says he, ‘a strikin’ on the water down that there well.’ And I turned sick at the thought of it. And it’s down there that I wished the darlin’s that God had sent me; for there they’d be quiet.” “Mothers are often a little out of their minds at such times, Mrs Tomkins. And so were you.”