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"What could a Christian friend say to you?" he asked at length.

"Remind me of something, or of some words, that I ought to remember,"

said Dolly, still weeping.

"Of what?" said Rupert. "If you know, tell me. Remind yourself; that's as good as having some one else remind you. What comfort is there in religion for a great trouble? Is there any?"

"Yes," said Dolly.

"What then? Tell us, Miss Dolly. I may want it some time, as well as you."

"I suppose everybody is pretty sure to want it, some time in his life,"

said Dolly sadly, but trying to wipe away her tears.

"Let's have the comfort then," said Rupert, "if you've got it."

"Why, are _you_ in trouble, Rupert?" she said, rousing up. "What about?"

"Never mind; let's have the comfort; that's the thing wanted just now.

What would you say to me now if I wanted it pretty bad?"

"The trouble is, it is so hard to believe what God says," Dolly said, speaking half to herself and half to her companion.

"What does He say? Is it anything a fellow can take hold of and hold on to? I never could make out much by what I've heard folks tell; and I never heard much anyhow, to begin with."

"One of the things that are good to me," said Dolly, bowing her face on her hand, "is--that Jesus knows."

"Knows what?"

"All about it--everything--my trouble, and your trouble, if you have any."

"I don't see the comfort in that. If He knows, why don't He hinder? I suppose He _can_ hinder?"

"He does hinder whatever would be real harm to His people; He has promised that."

"Well, ain't this real harm, that is worrying you?" said Rupert. "What do you call harm?"

"Pain and trouble are not always harm," said Dolly, "for His children often have them, I know; and no trouble seems sweet at the minute, but bitter; and the sweet fruits come afterward. Oh, it's so bitter now!"

cried poor Dolly, unable to keep the tears back again;--"but He knows.

He knows."

"If He knows," said Rupert, wholly unable to understand this reasoning, "why doesn't He hinder? That's what I look at."

"I don't know," said Dolly faintly.

"What comforts you in that, then?" said Rupert almost impatiently.

"That's too big a mouthful for me."

"No, you're wrong," said Dolly. "He knows why. I have the comfort of that, and so I am sure there _is_ a why. It is not all vague chance and confusion, with no hand to rule anything. Don't you see what a difference that makes?"

"Do you mean to say, that everything that happens is for the best?"

"No," said Dolly. "Wrong can never be as good as right. Only, Rupert, God will so manage things that to His children--to His children--good shall come out of evil, and nothing really hurt them."

"Then the promise is only for them?"

"That's all. How could it be for the others?"

"I don't see it," said Rupert. "Seems to my eyes as if black was black and white white; it's the fault of my eyes, I s'pose. It is only moonshine to my eyes, that makes black white."

"Rupert, you do not understand. I will tell you. You know the story of Joseph. Well, when his brothers tried to murder him, that was what you call evil, wasn't it?"

"Black, and no moonshine on it."

"Yet it led to his being sold into Egypt."

"What was the moonshine on that? He was a slave, warn't he?"

"But that brought him to be governor of Egypt; he was the means of the plenty in the land through those years of famine; and by his power and influence his family was placed in the best of the land when starvation drove them down there."

"But why must he be sold a slave to begin with?"

"Good reasons. As a servant of Potiphar he learned to know all about the land and its produce and its cultivation, and the peasant people that cultivated it. If it had not been for the knowledge he gained as a slave, Joseph could never have known what to do as a governor."

"I never thought of that," said Rupert, his tone changing.

"Then when he was thrown into prison, _you_ would have said that was a black experience too?"

"I should, and no mistake."

"And there, among the great prisoners of state, he learned to know about the politics of the country, and heard what he never could have heard talked about anywhere else; and there, by interpreting their dreams, he recommended himself to the high officers of Pharaoh. Except through the prison, it is impossible to see how he, a poor foreigner, could ever have come to be so distinguished at the king's court; for the Egyptians hated and despised foreigners."

"I'll be whipped if that ain't a good sermon," said Rupert drily; "and what's more, I can understand it, which I can't most sermons I've heard. But look here,--do you think God takes the same sort of look-out for common folks? Joseph was Joseph."

"The care comes of His goodness, not out of our worthiness," said Dolly, the tears dripping from her eyes. "To Him, Dolly is Dolly, and Rupert is Rupert, just as truly. I know it, and yet I am so ungrateful!"

"But tell me, then," Rupert went on, "how comes it that God, who can do everything, does not make people good right off? Half the trouble in the world comes of folks' wrong-headedness; why don't He make 'em reasonable?"

"He tries to make them reasonable."

"_Tries!_ Why don't He do it?"

"You, for instance," said Dolly--"because He has given you the power of choice, Rupert; and you know yourself that obedience would not be obedience if it were not voluntary."

On this theological nut Rupert ruminated, without finding anything to say.

"You have comforted me," Dolly went on presently. "Thank you, Rupert.

You have made me remember what I had forgotten. Just look at that palace front in the moonlight!"

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