"So, then, you see, I had got her, my friends, and Frankie smiled. 'O wife,' says I, 'do you think that you be going to take care o' the little maid like that an' your Father in heaven be a-going to forget you altogether? Come now (bless him!), isn't he as much to be trusted as you are! An' do you think that he'd see the winter coming up sharp and cold, an' not have something waiting for you, an' just what you want, too? An' I know, dear wifie, that you wouldn't like to hear the little maid go a-fretting, and saying: "There the cold winter be a-coming, an' whatever shall I do if my mother should forget me?" Why, you'd be hurt an' grieved that she should doubt you like that. She knows that you care for her, an' what more does she need to know? That's enough to keep her from fretting about anything. "Your heavenly Father knoweth that you have need of all these things." That be put down in his book for you, wifie, and on purpose for you; an' you grieve an' hurt him when you go to fretting about the future, an' doubting his love.'" Dr. Trent closed the book, and looked into his listener's thoughtful eyes. "There, Bethany," he said, "is the lesson I have learned. Nothing is withheld that we really need. Sometimes I have thought that I was tried beyond my power of endurance, but when His hand has fallen the heaviest, His infinite fatherliness has seemed most near; and often, when I least expected it, some great blessing has surprised me. I have learned, after a long time, that when we put ourselves unreservedly in His hands, he is far kinder to us than we would be to ourselves. 'Always hath the daylight broken, Always hath he comfort spoken, Better hath he been for years Than my fears.' I can say from the bottom of my heart, Bethany, Though he slay me, yet will I trust him." The tears had gathered in Bethany's eyes as she listened. Now she hastily brushed them aside. The face that she turned toward her old friend reminded him of a snowdrop that had caught a gleam of sunshine in the midst of an April shower. "You have brushed away my last doubt and foreboding, Uncle Doctor!" she exclaimed. "Really, I have been entertaining an angel unawares." The old clock in the hall sounded the half-hour chime, and he rose to go. "You have beguiled me into staying much longer than I intended," he answered. "What will my poor patients in the country think of such a long delay?" "Tell them you have been opening blind eyes," she said, gravely. "Indeed, Uncle Doctor, the knowledge that, despite all you have suffered, you can still trust so implicitly, strengthens my faith more than you can imagine." At the hall door he turned and took both her hands in his: