A great rampart of gray, blue, violet clouds lay jagged, grand, like rocks along a shore. Up over them rushed light, crimson surf, foaming, tossing. Beyond, a rosy sea. In it, little golden boats floated. The flamy light flung itself up into the calm zenith; there it met the still heaven-color, and the sky was tender with saffron-touched blue. So the tempest of trouble met the tempest of love in the end of the day, and the world rolled on into the night under the glory and peace of their rushing and melting together. After all that, they came back by a step and a word--these mortal observers,--to practical consultation such as mortals must have, and especially if they be upon their travels; to questions about bestowal, and the homely, kindly, funny little details of Mrs. Jeffords' hospitality. "Where should she put them? Why, she was _always_ ready. To be sure, the _front_ upper room had had the carpets taken up since the summer company went, and the beds were down; but, la, there was room enough!" "There's the east down-stairs bedroom, and the little west-room over the sittin'-room, and there's _my_ room! I ain't never put out!" "But you are; out of your room; and you ought not to be." "Don't _care_!" said Mrs. Jeffords, triumphantly. "There's the kitchen bedroom, that I keep apurpose to camp down in. It's all right. Don't you worry." "You never care; that's the reason I do worry," said Sylvie. "I've learnt not to care," said Mrs. Jeffords. "'Tain't no use. You must take things as they are. They will be so, and you can't help it. If they fall right side up, well and good; if they're wrong side up, let 'em lay. And they ain't wrong side up yet, I can tell you. You just go and sit down and enjoy yourselves." Mrs. Argenter was brighter this evening than she had been for a long while. "It was nice to be among people again," she said, when the evening was over. "So it is," said Sylvie. "But somehow I didn't feel the difference the other way. I think I always _am_ among people. At least it never seems to me as if they were very far off. Next door mayn't be exactly alongside, but it is next door for all that, and it is in the world. And the world wakes up all together every morning,--that is, as fast as the morning gets round." With her "mayn't be's" and her "is'es," Sylvie was unconsciously making a habit of the trick of Susan Nipper, but with a kindlier touch to her antitheses than pertained to those of that acerb damsel. Mrs. Argenter wanted tangible presences. She had not reached so far as her child into that inner living where all feel each other, knowing that "these same tribulations"--and joys also--are accomplished among the brotherhood that is in all the earth; knowing, too,--ah! that is the blessedness when we come to it,--that we may walk, already, in the heavenly places with all them that are alive unto each other in the Lord.