"Not a word. I wouldn't have you do so, on any account. Confidence is sacred, from anyone—from a father or mother especially so, if there can be any 'especial' in connection with what is absolute. 'I' shall not repeat even my own conjecture to any human being. Be sure of that! . . . But I do not wish Little Eyebright to leave home with so sad a face. It's not needful, child. Things will come right." "Will they?" Euphrasia looked with unbelieving eyes at her friend. "How can you tell? Things don't always come right." "Not with everybody. That may be. It depends—" "Does it?" Euphrasia seemed to take the rest of the unspoken sentence for granted. "If people are good enough, you mean. But nobody can be more good than my father. And that does not mean that everything must always come right with him." "I think it does. 'We "know" that all things work together for good to them that love God.' We 'know' so much, with a certain knowledge. If he loves God, then all things must and will work together for his good. Whether that is exactly what you mean by 'things coming right,' I cannot say. It is what I mean." A certain girlish resistance was in the other's face. "Not easy to grasp, at your age, perhaps." "I don't see how that would make trouble any the less hard to bear." "Trouble is meant to be trouble; and you must not expect it to be aught else. The knowledge that it is to work utterly and absolutely for our good, ought to make it less hard to bear." "It wouldn't, with me. I should want the trouble taken away,—just the same. I hate things going all crooked. It's so miserable. I suppose I ought not to talk so—but—I'd rather be without the trouble, and without the good of it too." "You may say what you think to me. Probably many of us feel so at times, in our ignorance of what we wish. To be 'without the good' 'might' imply such awful loss in the future,—yet of course we don't understand. And God knows that we don't. Mercifully He doesn't punish us by taking us at our word, and treating us according to our folly. After all, it is just Father and child over again, as we see the relationship daily. The father, knowing best and loving most, bent on the child's happiness, and willing at any cost to himself, to give present pain for future good. The child bent on present ease and enjoyment, not able to understand the discipline it has to bear, or to look ahead . . . What do you say? Yes, cost to the child, no doubt, but greater cost to Himself: because the pain of giving pain is more severe to a loving nature than that of receiving pain! . . . There is nothing for it but trust, where we cannot see. HE deals with us commonly according to the measure of our trust, responding more when we expect more, and less when we expect less." Euphrasia seemed to be lost in thought. When she spoke, it was to put a question.