“I’m not discontented, Mr. Allen,” answered Mercy, a little proudly.  “I never had a discontented moment in my life.  I’m not so silly.  I have never yet seen the day which did not seem to me brimful and running over with joys and delights; that is, except when I was for a little while bowed down by a grief nobody could bear up under,” she added, with a sudden drooping of every feature in her expressive face, as she recalled the one sharp grief of her life.  “I don’t see why a distinct longing for all sorts of beautiful things need be in the least inconsistent with absolute content.  In fact, I know it isn’t; for I have both.”

Mr. Allen was not enough of an idealist to understand this.  He looked puzzled, and Mercy went on,—­

“Why, Mr. Allen, I should like to have our home perfectly beautiful, just like the most beautiful houses I have read about in books.  I should like to have the walls hung full of pictures, and the rooms filled full of books; and I should like to have great greenhouses full of all the rare and exquisite flowers of the whole world.  I’d like one house like the house you told me of, full of all the orchids, and another full of only palms and ferns.  I should like to wear always the costliest of silks, very plain and never of bright colors, but heavy and soft and shining; and laces that were like fleecy clouds when they are just scattering.  I should like to be perfectly beautiful, and to have perfectly beautiful people around me.  But all this doesn’t make me one bit less contented.  I care just as much for my few little, old books, and my two or three pictures, and our beds of sweet-williams and pinks.  They all give me such pleasure that I’m just glad I’m alive every minute.—­What are you thinking of, Mr. Allen!” exclaimed Mercy, breaking off and coloring scarlet, as she became suddenly aware that her pastor was gazing at her with a scrutinizing look she had never seen on his face before.

“Of your future life, Mercy,—­of your future life.  I am wondering what it will be, and if the dear Lord will carry you safe through all the temptations which the world must offer to one so sensitive as you are to all its beauties,” replied Mr. Allen, sadly.  Mercy was displeased.  She was always intolerant of this class of references to the Lord.  Her sense of honesty took alarm at them.  In a curt and half-petulant tone, she answered,—­

“I suppose ministers have to say such things, Mr. Allen; but I wish you wouldn’t say them to me.  I do not think that the Lord made the beautiful things in this world for temptations; and I believe he expects us to keep ourselves out of mischief, and not throw the responsibility on to him!”

“Oh, Mercy, Mercy! don’t say such things!  They sound irreverent:  they shock me!” exclaimed Mr. Allen, deeply pained by Mercy’s tone and words.

“I am very sorry to shock you, Mr. Allen,” replied Mercy, in a gentler tone.  “Pray forgive me.  I do not think, however, there is half as much real irreverence in saying that the Lord expects us to look out for ourselves and keep out of mischief as there is in teaching that he made a whole world full of people so weak and miserable that they couldn’t look after themselves, and had to be lifted along all the time.”