“I am afraid I do like it. When it roars like that in the chimneys, and shakes the windows with a great rush as if it _would_ get into the house and tear us to pieces, and then goes moaning away into the woods and grumbles about in them till it grows savage again, and rushes up at us with fresh fury, I am afraid I delight in it. I feel so safe in the very jaws of danger.” “Why, you are quite poetic, Connie,” said Wynnie. “Don’t laugh at me, Wynnie. Mind I’m an invalid, and I can’t bear to be laughed at,” returned Connie, half laughing herself, and a little more than a quarter crying. Wynnie rose and kissed her, whispered something to her which made her laugh outright, and then sat down again. “But tell me, Connie,” I said, “why you are _afraid_ you enjoy hearing the wind about the house.” “Because it must be so dreadful for those that are out in it.” “Perhaps not quite so bad as we think. You must not suppose that God has forgotten them, or cares less for them than for you because they are out in the wind.” “But if we thought like that, papa,” said Wynnie, “shouldn’t we come to feel that their sufferings were none of our business?” “If our benevolence rests on the belief that God is less loving than we, it will come to a bad end somehow before long, Wynnie.” “Of course, I could not think that,” she returned. “Then your kindness would be such that you dared not, in God’s name, think hopefully for those you could not help, lest you should, believing in his kindness, cease to help those whom you could help! Either God intended that there should be poverty and suffering, or he did not. If he did not intend it--for similar reasons to those for which he allows all sorts of evils--then there is nothing between but that we should sell everything that we have and give it away to the poor.” “Then why don’t we?” said Wynnie, looking truth itself in my face. “Because that is not God’s way, and we should do no end of harm by so doing. We should make so many more of those who will not help themselves who will not be set free from themselves by rising above themselves. We are not to gratify our own benevolence at the expense of its object--not to save our own souls as we fancy, by putting other souls into more danger than God meant for them.” “It sounds hard doctrine from your lips, papa,” said Wynnie.