'Thou shalt not long toil here, nor always be oppressed with griefs. 'Wait a little while, and thou shalt see a speedy end of thy evils. 'There will come a time when all labour and trouble shall cease, 'Poor and brief is all that passeth away with time. 'Do [in earnest] what thou doest; labour faithfully in My vineyard: I will be thy recompense. 'Write, read, chant, mourn, keep silence, pray, endure crosses manfully; life everlasting is worth all these conflicts, and greater than these. 'Peace shall come in one day, which is known unto the Lord; and it shall not be day nor night (that is at this present time), but unceasing light, infinite brightness, stedfast peace, and secure rest.' 'Don't you like it?' whispered Olive, timidly; but Mildred still made no answer. How she had wronged this girl! Under the ungainly form lay this beautiful soul-coinage, fresh from God's mint, with His stamp of innocence and divinity fresh on it, to be marred by a world's use or abuse. Mildred's clear instinct had already detected unusual intelligence under the clumsiness and awkward ways that were provocative of perpetual censure in the family circle. The timidity that seemed to others a cloak for mere coldness had not deceived her. But she was not prepared for this faith that defied dead matter, and clung about the spirit footsteps of the mother, bearing in the silence--that baffling silence to smaller natures--the faint perceptive whispers of deathless love. 'Olive, you have made me ashamed of my own doubts,' she said at last, taking the girl's hand and looking on the unlovely face with feelings akin to reverence. 'I see now, as I never have done before, how a thorough understanding robs even death of its terror--how "perfect love casteth out fear."' 'If one could always feel as one does now,' sighed Olive, raising her dark eyes with a new yearning in them. 'But the rest and the strength seem to last for such a little time. Last Sunday,' she continued, sadly, 'I felt almost happy sitting here. Life seemed somehow sweet, after all, but before evening I was utterly wretched.' 'By your own fault, or by that of others?' 'My own, of course. If I were not so provoking in my ways--Cardie, I mean--the others would not be so hard on me. Thinking makes one absent, and then mistakes happen.'