for them who most need it. Also the austere rules are more definite,
which makes them a surer guide for the soul desiring goodness, but
passionately astray. It spurns them, demanding loving-kindness; and
discovers too late that loving-kindness dictated them.



CHAPTER III.


Two mornings after Patty's arrival, Hetty sat in the schoolroom
telling a Bible story to her pupils, George Grantham and small
Rebecca; the one aged eight, the other barely five. They were by no
means clever children; but they knew a good story when they heard
one, and Hetty held them to the adventures of Joseph and his
Brethren, although great masses of snow were sliding off the roof,
and every now and then toppling down past the window with a rush--
which every child knows to be fascinating. For the black frost had
broken up at last in a twelve hours' downfall of snow, and this in
turn had yielded to a soft southerly wind. The morning sunshine
poured in through the school-room window and took all colour out of
the sea-coal fire.

"One night Joseph dreamed a dream which he told next morning to his
brothers. And his dream was that they were all in the harvest-field,
binding sheaves: and when Joseph had bound his sheaf, it stood
upright, but the other sheaves around slid and fell flat, as if they
were bowing on their faces before it. When he told this, it made his
brothers angry, because it seemed to mean that he would be a greater
man than any of them."