4. "Will you not go in and stay till morning?" said the porter to Greatheart, at the gate of the House Beautiful. "No," said the guide; "I will return to my lord to-night." "O sir!" cried Christiana and Mercy, "we know not how to be willing you should leave us in our pilgrimage. Oh that we might have your company till our journey's end." Then said James, the youngest of the boys, "Pray be persuaded to go with us and help us, because we are so weak and the way so dangerous as it is." "I am at my lord's commandment," said Greatheart. "If he shall allow me to be your guide quite through, I shall willingly wait upon you. But here you failed at first; for when he bid me come thus far with you, then you should have begged me of him to have gone quite through with you, and he would have granted your request. However, at present, I must withdraw, and so, good Christiana, Mercy, and my brave children, adieu!" "Help lost for want of asking for," is our author's condemnatory comment on the margin at this point in the history. And there is not a single page in my history, or in yours, my brethren, on which the same marginal lament is not written. What help we would have had on our Lord's promise if we had but taken the trouble to ask for it! And what help we once had, and have now lost, just because when we had it we did not ask for a continuance of it! "No," said Greatheart to the porter, and to the two women, and to James--"No. I will return to my lord to-night. I am at my lord's commandment; only, if he shall still allot me I shall willingly wait upon you."