"He must know best, of course: but it does seem hard that that very thing should happen to them. Huber would not have so much minded being deaf, perhaps; or that musical man being blind; or Richard Grant losing his foot, instead of his hand: for he did not want to go round the world." "No doubt their hearts often swelled within them at their disappointments: but I fully believe that they found very soon that God's will was wiser than their wishes. They found, if they bore their trial well, that there was work for their hearts to do, far nobler than any work that the head can do through the eye, and the ear, and the hand. And they soon felt a new and delicious pleasure, which none but the bitterly disappointed can feel." "What is that?" "The pleasure of rousing their souls to bear pain, and of agreeing with God silently, when nobody knows what is in their hearts. There is a great pleasure in the exercise of the body,--in making the heart beat, and the limbs glow, in a run by the sea-side, or a game in the playground; but this is nothing to the pleasure there is in exercising one's soul in bearing pain,--in finding one's heart glow with the hope that one is pleasing God." "Shall I feel that pleasure?" "Often and often, I have no doubt,--every time that you can willingly give up your wish to be a soldier or a sailor,--or anything else that you have set your mind upon, if you can smile to yourself, and say that you will be content at home.--Well, I don't expect it of you yet. I dare say it was long a bitter thing to Beethoven to see hundreds of people in raptures with his music, when he could not hear a note of it. And Huber----" "But did Beethoven get to smile?" "If he did, he was happier than all the fine music in the world could have made him." "I wonder--O! I wonder if I ever shall feel so." "We will pray to God that you may. Shall we ask him now?" Hugh clasped his hands. His mother kneeled beside the bed, and, in a very few words, prayed that Hugh might be able to bear his misfortune well, and that his friends might give him such help and comfort as God should approve. "Now, my dear, you will sleep again," she said, as she arose. "If you will lie down too, instead of sitting by the fire. Do, mother." She did so; and they were soon both asleep. CHAPTER IX. CROFTON QUIET. The boys were all in the school-room in the grey of the morning;--no one late. Mr. Tooke was already there. Almost every boy looked wistfully in the grave face of the master;--almost every one but his own son. He looked down; and it seemed natural: for his eyes were swollen with crying. He had been crying as much as Proctor: but, then, so had Dale.