Hubert grieved for his mother with the strength of an intense, reticent nature.  But, as did also his sister, he found solace in God.

Winifred felt very keenly her mother’s loss, missing the vanished hand from every part of the house where she now assumed her place, seeing everywhere reminders of her dainty touch and quiet taste, and longing for her voice yet more and more as the days went by.  This great bereavement came so closely on the separation from one whom she never mentioned now, but who was far from forgotten, that often her heart seemed torn between the two sorrows.  Sometimes waves of disheartenment came on cloudy days of testing, when the sun was hidden and life looked cheerless and hard.  But anon the face of Jesus Christ broke through the clouds, and with the vision came always joy.

The three who were left drew more closely to each other, and despite their sorrow found a sweetness of comfort together never known before.

CHAPTER XV

“SELL THAT YE HAVE”

Three years had passed, and the snows of winter had lain heavily for weeks upon all the region surrounding New Laodicea.  It spread soft mantles over lawns and roofs in the city, and only in the streets was its white purity turned by the traffic of man into vileness.  On a sharp, clear morning Hubert Gray walked through the cutting air toward his office, and meditated thus: 

“What am I doing?  What is the occupation that employs so much of my waking time and the powers that God has given me?  ’Diligent in business,’ the Scripture says.  Yes, I am certainly that, but what is it all for?  I am trading in iron, as my father has done, and laying up treasure on earth.  That is something—­the laying up treasure on earth—­that the Lord Jesus said not to do.  But did He really mean it?  Nobody takes it very literally, I suppose.

“‘Sell that ye have and give alms.’  That is what I read this morning.  ’Make for yourselves purses which wax not old, a treasure in the heavens that faileth not.’

“How much does it mean?  We cannot always press the words of the Lord to their utmost literal meaning.  I suppose He used language a great deal as we do, to be taken at its face value, and not screwed and pressed and tortured into literal exactness until all the spirit is taken out of it?  But these words sound very bald and unequivocal.  I wish I knew what they meant.  Would I act on them if I did?  There’s the rub.  It is undoubtedly hard for a man with money to look at the matter disinterestedly.  And Jesus said, ’How hardly shall they that have riches enter into the kingdom of God!’