"Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, Guard the bed that I lie on!" And when the small eyes were closed and the minute mouth had taken on the sweet smile of sleeping, and the hands had relaxed into white, starry flowers, she would steal downstairs to her guests, to the gracious room where sleek, well-bred women and kindly, burly men were gathered to dine in company or to play cards, where the bluish smoke rose in whorls from the white tubes of tobacco, and there was soft candle-light and tinkling glass. And she would feel happy there, secure. There would be no apprehension in her. For above, at the four corners of the bed where the minute humanity slept were four figures of great power, four lumbering grizzled fisherman--Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John! IV The old lady watched Berenice walk down the road, pausing for a moment in her beautiful needlework to admire her young daughter-in-law's slim, willowy figure, the eager pose of her head, her brown, beautifully plaited hair. The apple-green of her dress and the blue-green of the trees--she made such a beautiful picture, and the old lady shook her head and sighed. And one might imagine the old lady saying: When I was young I was as lissome as that, as pretty, had as eager a head. Time flies, and we grow old. Ah, the fine days of young womanhood! But that was not in her mind at all: she shook her head because she knew the heartaches, the difficulties, the terrors the young girl must go through before she attained to the reward of women--wisdom and peace. For they all came to that in the latter end, the old lady thought--the girls who started out dancing, and the girls whose eyes were troubled with thought, and the girls deep as rivers, and the shallow girls who angled for a honeyed word. And life, like some deft schoolmistress, caught them and taught them and put wisdom in their heads, and in their hearts little modest flowers, like forget-me-nots. And the sad girls learned laughter from little children on the floor, and the wayward ones learned loyalty from trouble, and great emotional currents put depths into the shallow ones. And life seemed so hard, the present so brutal, the future terrible as an army with banners--but one day it was gone. All was past. And in retrospect it seemed so little pain to have had, to learn such a great lesson, to come to such a sweet place! If one came through it, it was so much worth while. The hazards one made so much of ... Oh! Did n't she know!