"It does not come 'just the same.' If it comes, it comes differently, or we are made able to meet it differently. My dear, try for yourself," urged Mrs. Landor, her slender hand resting on the girl's sunburnt fingers. "Only try, and prove for yourself how kind and true a Master He is. He will not be dictated to, but He does love to be appealed to. Only put your worries straight off into His Hands, and ask Him to arrange everything for the best. If your experience in life is to be at all the same as mine has been, you will constantly be amazed at the manner of answer that comes, so simple and direct. Very often so exactly the thing that you have asked and wished for. I don't say it 'will' be the same. God does not treat us as patients were treated in olden hospitals—laid us in rows, to receive the same doses of medicine all round. Each case needs its own treatment, and each case gets it. But one thing I do know, that you will never turn to Him in vain." "Some people don't seem to get such answers." "Do they expect such answers, Euphrasia?" Mrs. Landor had no reply to her question. Half to herself, yet distinctly, she quoted,— "'If our love were but more simple, We should take Him at His Word: And our lives would be all sunshine In the sweetness of our Lord.' "All sunshine doesn't mean no clouds, but it does mean sunlight between and through the clouds . . . Still, answers are sometimes long delayed. That again may be the higher honour put upon us. We test a rope more or less severely, according to our belief in the strength of the rope." [Illustration] [Illustration] CHAPTER V THE JOHNSTON FAMILY "WHERE is Letitia? I can't imagine what has become of her. That girl will be here directly, and it will seem so rude, if Letitia is out. Somebody ought to have met her in Bristol, but really I have not known how to arrange it; and Letitia never thinks of anything." "Except it be a thing that she wants for herself," chimed in Howard Johnston, a rather handsome and severe-looking young man, busy at a side writing-table in the large drawing-room. It was an upstairs drawing-room, after the manner of the big old-fashioned Royal York Crescent houses in Clifton; and its front windows overlooked the lengthy crescent-shaped stone terrace which partly hid from sight the road below. "Girls always think of themselves first. What can you expect? I'm sure she is welcome to do what she likes, generally. 'I' don't expect my children to put themselves out for me," declared Mrs. Johnston complacently, from the depths of a luxurious chair. "But I do think she ought to have managed to meet her friend. She knows that I meant to send her down in a cab with Jerrold—and I didn't see the use of Jerrold going alone. She would never have managed to stumble on the right person. Jerrold is all very well as a maid, but she is stupid about that sort of thing." "It might have been more polite to make the effort."