"You kin git the rest in the garden of the Lord." "It ain't good to change soil on some plants too soon. I ain't ready to be set out." He went on reading: "'I 'm not so narrow as I was at home. I don't think so many things are wrong as I used to. It is good to be like other people sometimes, and not to feel yoreself apart from all the rest of humanity. I am growing to act more like the people I meet, and so I am--'" the old man's hand trembled, and he moved the paper nearer to his eyes--"'I--' What 's this he says? 'I am learning to dance.'" "There!" his wife shot forth triumphantly. "What did I tell you? Going to a Congregational church an' learnin' to dance, an' he not a year ago a preacher of the gospel." Eliphalet was silent for some time: his eyes looked far out into space. Then he picked up the paper that had fluttered from his hand, and a smile flitted over his face. "Well, I don't know," he said. "Freddie 's young, an' they 's worse things in the world than dancin'." "You ain't a-upholdin' him in that too, air you? Well, I never! You 'd uphold that sinful boy ef he committed murder." "I ain't a-upholdin' nothin' but what I think is right." "Right! 'Liphalet Hodges, what air you a-sayin'?" "Not that I mean to say that dancin' is right, but--" "There ain't no 'buts' in the Christian religion, 'Liphalet, an' there ain't no use in yore tryin' to cover up Freddie's faults." "I ain't a-tryin' to cover nothin' up from God. But sometimes I git to thinkin' that mebbe we put a good many more bonds on ourselves than the Lord ever meant us to carry." "Oh, some of us don't struggle under none too heavy burdens. Some of us have a way of jest slippin' 'em off of our shoulders like a bag of flour." "Meanin' me. Well, mebbe I have tried to make things jest as easy fur myself as possible, but I 'ain't never tried to make 'em no harder fur other people. I like to think of the Master as a good gentle friend, an' mebbe I 'ain't shifted so many o' the burdens He put on me that He won't let me in at last." "'Liphalet, I did n't say what I said fur no slur ag'in' you. You 're as good a Christian man as--well, as most." "I know you did n't mean no slur, Hester. It was jest yore dooty to say it. I 've come to realise how strong yore feelin' about dooty is, in the years we 've been together, an' I would n't want you to be any different." The calm of old age had come to these two. Life's turbulent waters toss us and threaten to rend our frail bark in pieces. But the swelling of the tempest only lifts us higher, and finally we reach and rest upon the Ararat of age, with the swirling floods below us.