"At supper I found myself quite composed, and, at Lady Bernard's request, stood up, and gave them all a little sketch of grannie's history, of which sketch what had happened that evening was made the central point. Many of the simpler hearts about me received it, without question, as a divine arrangement for my comfort and encouragement,--at least, thus I interpreted their looks to each other, and the remarks that reached my ear; but presently a man stood up,--one who thought more than the rest of them, perhaps because he was blind,--a man at once conceited, honest, and sceptical; and silence having been made for him,--'Ladies and gentlemen,' he began, as if he had been addressing a public meeting, 'you've all heard what grannie has said. It's very kind of her to give us so much of her history. It's a very remarkable one, _I_ think, and she deserves to have it. As to what upset her this very night as is,--and I must say for her, I've knowed her now for six years, and I never knowed _her_ upset afore,--and as to what upset her, all I can say is, it may or may not ha' been what phylosophers call a coincydence; but at the same time, if it wasn't a coincydence, and if the Almighty had a hand in it, it were no more than you might expect. He would look at it in this light, you see, that maybe she was wrong to fancy herself so down on her luck as all that, but she was a good soul, notwithstandin,' and he would let her know he hadn't forgotten her. And so he set her down in that room there,--wi' her eyes like them here o' mine, as never was no manner o' use to me,--for a minute, jest to put her in mind o' what had been, and what she had said there, an' how it was all so different now. In my opinion, it were no wonder as she broke down, God bless her! I beg leave to propose her health.' So they drank my health in lemonade and ginger-beer; for we were afraid to give some of them stronger drink than that, and therefore had none. Then we had more music and singing; and a clergyman, who knew how to be neighbor to them that had fallen among thieves, read a short chapter and a collect or two, and said a few words to them. Then grannie and her children went home together, all happy, but grannie the happiest of them all." "Strange and beautiful!" said my father. "But," he added, after a pause, "you must have met with many strange and beautiful things in such a life as yours; for it seems to me that such a life is open to the entrance of all simple wonders. Conventionality and routine and arbitrary law banish their very approach." "I believe," said Miss Clare, "that every life has its own private experience of the strange and beautiful. But I have sometimes thought that perhaps God took pains to bar out such things of the sort as we should be no better for. The reason why Lazarus was not allowed to visit the brothers of Dives was, that the repentance he would have urged would not have followed, and they would have been only the worse in consequence."