“Perhaps we all need rest occasionally. I feel different. As if I had thrown off a kind of hanging fever and were strong again.” “When you have taken that,” she observed, indicating the bowl, “you will feel stronger still. You will sleep again in a little while, and after that you will be able to get up.” Sunbeam clapped her hands. “Why are you so happy, little mite?” I asked, for she was no higher than a child of seven and as fragile as she was fair. “I was thinking we should walk together in the gardens now and then,” she replied, and this simple pleasure seemed a great delight to her. “How long am I to be your guest?” I queried. The mother shook her head and smiled. “I think we shall keep you always, till you care to leave us,” she said. “At any rate, I do not think there is any immediate prospect of your going away.” “I think I shall thrive better here than in Hell,” I affirmed. “I cannot tell whether it was rapid or slow consumption I suffered from when there.” She gazed at me with eyes which had changed to sad sincerity. “It was lack of all nourishment,” she declared. “It kills the strongest and the weakest off in time. After all, death is the greatest mercy when it comes, though at the time it seems the hardest pain.” “You know something about it then?” I asked in some surprise. I had thought such a fair being would have been spared such knowledge. She laughed. “Well, I know just a little about most things,” she said, “so perhaps I am not altogether such a charming creature as I appear to be.” “On the contrary, I find you much more—” And then I stopped. The word “charming” did not suit her, and I could find no other. “You are at a loss for a word already,” she interposed lightly. “Let us put our heads together, Sunbeam, and think of a word to describe us both, but it sha’n’t be ‘sympathetic,’ for that would make us pale and interesting at once.” “But,” I ventured, “sympathy is reckoned a great thing on the earth just now.” “You don’t know,” she rejoined, shaking her head. “You haven’t been there for some time, and fashions alter quickly. For aught you know, Tact may be dead, and she is the mother of Sympathy, and orphans rarely thrive in your world.” “You speak rather disrespectfully of both of them,” said I. She looked across at me with a curious mixture of amusement and seriousness. “Well, my husband tells me about them sometimes, and I generally go by what he says, for he states plain facts.” “He is not prejudiced?” She shook her head. “It would not do for us to be prejudiced,” she corrected. “It is a failing of mortals, not of spirits. And, even reckoned by the world’s standpoint, we should lose more by it than even you do.” By this I had given the bowl back to her, and when she had done speaking she rose and lifted Sunbeam to the ground. “We shall leave you to rest a little longer,” she said, “then perhaps you will join us later.”