Mrs. Everidge laughed brightly.  She had never pined to pose as a martyr before the world.

“God has been wondrous kind to me,” she said, “but there is a cure for all sorrow, dear friend, in his love.  The great Physician is the only one who has a medicament for that disease.  It is not forgetfulness, you know—­he does not deal in narcotics—­but he lays his pierced hand upon our bleeding hearts and stills their pain.  Our memory is as fresh as ever, but it is memory with the sting taken out.”

“Ah, but you cannot understand—­how should you?  You have always had everything you wanted, and you have never lost anything or longed for what has been denied you!” and a toilworn woman, whose life seemed one long battle with disappointment, looked enviously at Miss Diana, over whose peaceful face life’s twilight was falling in tender colors.

“Not quite everything I wanted, dear,” said Miss Diana softly, “but I have come to know that God himself is sufficient for all our needs.”

“Our dear Miss Diana has learned that ’we must sit in the sunshine if we would reflect the rainbow,’” said Aunt Marthe in her low tones.  “It is a good rule, ‘for every look we take at self, to take ten looks at Jesus.’  She lives in the light of his smile.”

Then through the open window they heard Evadne singing,

  “Oh, the little birds sang east, and the little birds sang west,
  And I smiled to think God’s greatness flowed around our incompleteness,
  Round our restlessness, his rest.”

And the weary soul folded its tired wings, all wounded with vain beatings against the prison bars of circumstance, and was hushed into a great stillness against the heart of its Father.

* * * * *

John Randolph sought Evadne in the familiar porch which had grown to be to him the sweetest spot on earth.

“You are always busy,” he said with a smile, as he lifted the garment she was making for the little waif who was to have her first taste of heaven at ‘The Willows.’  Satan has no chance to find an occupation for you.”

“But, oh, Doctor Randolph, what a drop in the bucket all our doing seems, when we think of the need of the world!”

“Yet without the drops the bucket would be empty, dear friend.  God never expects the impossible from us, you know.  I think Christ’s highest commendation will always be, ‘She hath done what she could.’  It is when we neglect the doing that he is wounded.”

After a pause he spoke again.  “With your permission I am going to send you a new patient.”  There was no trace of the struggle through which he had passed.  This brave soul had learned to do the right and leave the rest with God.

Evadne laughed.  “Still they come!  Is it man, woman or child.  Doctor Randolph?”

“Your cousin Louis.”  His voice was very still.

“Poor Louis!  Is it more serious then?  He has been looking wretchedly for months.”