"How can he want everybody to be happy, when he makes them so unhappy?" "He?--the Lord? He don't make nobody unhappy, child. How did that git in your head?" "Well, it comes to the same thing, Mother Bartlett. He lets things happen." "He hain't chained up Satan yet, if that's what you mean. But Satan can't do no harm to the Lord's children. He's tried, often enough, but the Lord won't let him." "But, Mother Bartlett, that's only a way of talking. I don't know if it is Satan does it, but every sort of terrible thing comes to them. How can you say it's not evil?" "'Cause the good Lord turns it to blessing, dear. Or if he don't, it's 'cause they won't let him. O' course it is Satan does it--Satan and his ministers. 'Every good gift and every perfect gift cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning.' How should he be kind to-day and unkind to-morrow?" Diana could not trust her voice and was silent. The old woman looked at her, and said in a changed tone presently, "What's come to you, Diana Masters? You had ought to be the happiest woman there is livin'." Diana could not answer. "_Ain't_ you, dear?" Mrs. Bartlett added tenderly. "I didn't mean to speak of myself," Diana said, making a tremendous effort to bring out her words unconcernedly; "but I get utterly puzzled sometimes, Mother Bartlett, when I see such things happen--such things as do happen, and to good people too." "You ain't the fust one that's been puzzled that way," returned the old woman. "Job was all out in his reckoning once; and David was as stupid as a beast, he says. But when chillen gets into the dark, they're apt to run agin sun'thin' and hurt theirselves. Stay in the light, dear." "How can one, always?" "O, child, jes' believe the Lord's word. That'll keep you near him; and there is no darkness where he is." "What _is_ his word, that I must believe?--about this, I mean." "That he loves us, dear; loves us tender and true; like you love your little baby, only a deal more; and truer, and tenderer. For a woman _may_ forget her sucking child, but he never will forget. And all things he will make to 'work together for good to them that love him.'" Diana shook and trembled with the effort to command herself and not burst into a storm of weeping, which would have betrayed what she did not choose to betray. She sat by the bedpost, clasping it, and with the same clasp as it were holding herself. For a moment _she_ had "forgotten her sucking child,"--the words came home; and it was only by that convulsive hold of herself that she could keep from crying out. With her face turned away from the sick woman, she waited till the convulsion had passed; and then said in measured, deliberate accents, "It is hard to see how some things can turn out for good--some things I have known."