"I want to do something. I should like to go and live with
Luclarion, I think, down there in Neighbor Street. I should like to
take hold of some other lives,--little children's, perhaps,"--and
here Desire's voice softened,--"that don't seem to have any business
to be, either, and see if I could help or straighten anything. Then
I feel is if I should know."

"Then--according to the Scripture--you _would_ know. But--that's
undertaking a good deal. Luclarion Grapp has got there; but she has
been fifty-odd years upon the road. And she has been doing real
things all the time. That's what has brought her there. You can't
boss the world's hard jobs till you've been a journeyman at the easy
ones."

"And I've missed my apprenticeship!" said Desire, with changed voice
and face, falling back into her disheartenment again.

"No!" Uncle Oldways almost shouted. "Not if you come to the Master
who takes in the eleventh hour workers. And it isn't the eleventh
hour with you,--_child_!"

He dwelt on that word "child," reminding her of her short mistaking
and of the long retrieval. Her nineteen years and the forever and
ever contrasted themselves before her suddenly, in the light of
hope.

She turned sharply, though, to look at her duty. Her journeyman's
duty of easy things.