“I should have told them besides,” pursued Aunt Judy, “that it would not please their dear mother at all for them to fret for her, and fancy they couldn’t do without her, and be discontented because God had taken her away, and think it would have been much better for them if He had not done so—­(as if He did not know a thousand times better than they could do:)—­but that it would please her very much for them to pray to God to make them good, so that they might all meet together at last in that very happy place.

“In short, No. 6, I would have led them, if possible, to make a comforting reality to themselves of the next world, as they had already got a comforting fancy out of the cellar-dream of the Tods.  And that is the good, dear child, which I meant might have been got out of the Tod adventure.”

Aunt Judy ceased, but there was no chance of seeing the effect of what she had said on No. 6’s face, for it was laid on her sister’s lap; probably to hide the tears which would come into her eyes at Aunt Judy’s allusion to what she had said about her.

At last a rather husky voice spoke:-

“You can’t expect people to like what is so very sad, even if it is—­ what you call—­right—­and all that.”

“No! neither does God expect it!” was Aunt Judy’s earnest reply.  “We are allowed to be sorry when trials come, for we feel the suffering, and cannot at present understand the blessing or necessity of it.  But we are not allowed to ‘sorrow without hope;’ and we are not allowed, even when we are most sorry, to be rebellious, and fancy we could choose better for ourselves than God chooses for us.”

Aunt Judy’s lesson, as well as story, was ended now, and she began talking over the entertaining part of the Tod history, and then went on to other things, till No. 6 was quite herself again, and wanted to know how much was true about the motherless little girls; and when she found from Aunt Judy’s answer that the account was by no means altogether an invention, she went into a fever-fidget to know who the children were, and what had become of them; and finally settled that the one thing in the world she most wished for, was to see them.

Nor would she be persuaded that this was a foolish idea, until Aunt Judy asked her how she would like to be introduced to a couple of very old women, with huge hooked noses, and beardy, nut-cracker chins, and be told that those were the motherless little girls who had broken their hearts over rabbits’ tails!—­an inquiry which tickled No. 6’s fancy immensely, so that she began to laugh, and suggest a few additions of her own to the comical picture, in the course of doing which, she fortunately quite lost sight of the “one thing” which a few minutes before she had “most wished for in the world!”

“Out of the way”

“Oh wonderful Son that can so astonish a Mother!”
Hamlet.