"No, Emilie, I have not been happy a great part of the holidays, but I
am happy now; happier at least, and it was no fault of yours at any
time. I know now why I was so discontented with my condition, and why I
thought I had more to try me than anybody else. I feel that I was in
fault; that I _am_ in fault, I should say; but, oh Emilie, I am trying,
trying hard, to--" and here, Edith, softened by the remembrance that
soon she and her friend must part, burst into tears.

"And you have succeeded, succeeded nobly, Edith, my darling. I have
watched you, and but that I feared to interfere, I would have noticed
your victories to you. I may do so now."

"My _victories_, Emilie! Are you making fun of me? I feel to have been
so very irritable of late.--My _victories!_"

"Just because, dear, you take notice of your irritability as you did not
use to do, and because you have constantly before your eyes that great
pattern in whom was no sin."

"Emilie, I will tell you something--your patience, your example, has
done me a great deal of good, I hope; but there is one thing in your
kind of advice, which does me more good than all. You have talked more
of the love of God than of any other part of his character, and the
words which first struck me very much, when I first began to wish that I
were different, were those you told me one Sunday evening, some time
ago. 'Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and
gave his Son a ransom for sinners.' There seemed such a contrast between
my conduct to God, and His to me; and then it has made me, I hope, a
little more, (a _very_ little, you know,) I am not boasting, Emilie, am