“Bless the child,” ejaculated Aunt Affy; “I never talked in my life.” “No, you never do; you only breathe out your spirit and your experiences; they find words for themselves; I truly believe you have nothing to do with the words; they _come_.” Aunt Affy laughed; she thought so herself. “Did you ever want to do anything different from your life? Were you always as satisfied as you are now?” asked Marion, taking Aunt Affy’s hard-working hand into her own pretty fingers. Then Aunt Affy laughed again. What a tumult her far-away girlhood had been. Did girls now-a-days think so much and have such confusing thoughts and times? “I had a longing to do a certain kind of work—very practical; and the only relief was praying to be satisfied with the having and doing it. That was a very holy state of mind, you think. I used to think so, too. Would it have been a holy state of mind if I had run next door to see my bosom friend and talked to her continually about it? My praying was simply to unburden myself. I had no bosom friend to talk to; if I had I might have told her about it instead of praying about it. And being devout I talked to God about it, instead of falling into reverie as one less devout would have done. I am not confident all my praying was prayer,” she answered, shaking her head with its two long white curls. “Yes,” said Marion, who had felt this dimly about her own praying. “But it held this inestimable blessing—it moved me to study about prayer, as no other experience would have done. And then, as the years went on, the comfort of what I found to believe was so satisfying that I forgot, for the while, the certain thing I was longing for. And then as it was not granted, I began to think the longing had been kept alive and craving that I might be kept alive and craving about prayer. God’s way of answering is as well worth studying as our way of asking.” “I should think it might be worth more,” said Marion. “I am glad to hear you say that. Some too introspective people regard more their way of asking—and in that way wander about in the dark while his way of answering is light about them.” “But then,” Marion said, argumentatively, “don’t you see that unless your prayer were granted what you were learning would not be true; that is, if the promises are to be taken literally and exactly.” “I do not always know about ‘literally and exactly.’ That depends upon just where we are. A child’s faith may need ‘literally and exactly.’ You and I may be growing into—not a less confident, but a more intelligent faith.” “Let me read you something. Dr. Parkhurst says—” Marion opened the volume and read:—“‘The longings of the human spirit have their own particular beatitude, and, better than any other interpreters, make clear the meaning of the Holy Word.’” “Read it again,” said Aunt Affy. “I’ve been all through that.” Marion read it again, very clearly, then laid aside the book.