"What are you unhappy about?" asked Miss Gregson. Meg sat up, wiping her eyes with her lace pocket handkerchief which seemed somehow so incongruous with the speaker. She stuffed it into her mouth to prevent her sobs being heard, a habit of hers which was very distasteful to Sheila who had reproved her for it more than once. Then dropping her handkerchief she started up, throwing her arms over her head in a wild way that nevertheless, Miss Gregson could not help noticing, became her. She stood up before her, tall, and strong, but the picture of despair. "If I only knew where to go to I'd go right away," she said. "Has anything happened to make you so sad?" asked Miss Gregson. "Yes, it has been happening for days and days. Sheila don't love me as she used to do. I can never please her or do anything right, and try and try as I may, it ain't no good. I worry about it till it makes me nearly mad. I couldn't stop in to-night. I wanted the stars and the darkness, and I wanted to feel once more what it would be like to be without somewhere to go to at night. I just had to come." The girl sat down again by Miss Gregson's side and covered her face with her hands. "Is there anything else troubling you?" "That's enough ain't it?" said Meg, forgetting her manners again in her distress. "I can't stop here if Sheila don't want me to, and I just can't go back to my old life. I can't, I can't." "Whatever happens, God will take care of you," said Miss Gregson. "Wait patiently for Him. You need not worry, dear child." "Mr. Fortescue believes all that. I wish I was sure of it," sighed the girl. "We seem quite alone in this quiet still garden, Meg, but if we had eyes to see we should find that the place is peopled with angels, and we know that God is here." Meg was silent, only an occasional sob making her quiver. "There lived only a few years ago," continued her companion, "a good man of the name of George Macdonald, who used to think a great deal about life and its mysteries. Listen now while I repeat some words of his that always strike me as being specially beautiful—" "So lies my journey—on into the dark, Without my will I find myself alive, And must go forward. Is it God that draws Magnetic all the souls unto their home, Travelling, they know not how, but unto God? It matters little what may come to me Of outward circumstance, and hunger, thirst, Social condition, yea, or love or hate; But what shall I be, fifty summers hence? My life, my being, all that meaneth me, Goes darkling forward into something—what? O God Thou knowest. It is not my care. If Thou wert less than truth, or less than love, It were a fearful thing to be and grow We know not what. My God, take care of me. Pardon and swathe me in an infinite love Pervading and inspiring me, Thy child."