Now and then, as she grew stronger, Miss Agnace told her stories, to which she liked to listen. They were almost all about _very_ good people who lived a great many years ago--wonderful stories some of them were, "If one only could believe them," Frederica used to say to herself. One day she said it to Miss Agnace, and for the first time her fair still face lost its calm, and looked angry. "Well, but that does sound rather like a fairy story, now doesn't it?" said Frederica, moved from her usual indifference by the unwonted sight of the nurse's indignation. "Of course it does not really mean that the loaves of bread all turned to roses in the lady's lap, when her cruel husband made her afraid. It is an allegory, is it not? Not exactly to be received as having really happened. It is a very pretty story, and you must not be angry, because I did not mean to offend you." All this was not said at once, but with a pause now and then. "Angry! no, why should I be angry? You know no better, poor child, poor unhappy child!" Frederica did not consider herself particularly happy just at this time, but it was not at all for the reason that Miss Agnace seemed to intimate. "Why do you say so? Why am I so unhappy?" asked she. "Because you have no religion," said Miss Agnace solemnly; "because you do not believe." It was perfectly true, and Frederica acknowledged in her heart, but not in the sense or for the reason that Miss Agnace seemed to imagine; so she said lightly,-- "A great many religious people refuse to believe such tales as these. They are very pretty, you know, and perhaps they have valuable lessons, but as for having, really happened! Such things don't happen now." "That is not true. Such things do happen still. Not frequently, but when God has a purpose to accomplish, a blessing to convey." "Tell me something that has happened lately," said Frederica, forgetting all else in her eagerness for a story. And so she did, and sometimes Frederica was interested, and sometimes she was amused. She heard of lame people who had been made to walk, of pictures which had spoken, of images which had wept, and many more of the same kind. "But I don't quite see the good of it, even if these things were all true," she said at last. "My child," said Miss Agnace gravely, "they are true. We have for their truth the authority of men to whom a lie is impossible. Do not say, `If they are true.'" "And does it make you happy to believe these things?" asked Frederica. "Happy?" repeated Miss Agnace; "can any one be happy who does not believe? Are you happy? Were you happy when you were so ill, when you thought you might die? Were you not afraid?" "Was I so ill as that?" asked Frederica, startled. "I never thought of dying. If I had, I daresay I should have been afraid. Did mama think so, and Selina? How sorry they must have been! And papa went away all the same."