"That is true. She had a bad fall when she was six years old, and
her body has never grown any since the accident," Miss Reynolds
explained. "She suffers a great deal--sometimes the pain is almost
unbearable; but, as a rule, she is very lovable and patient,
though, now and then, a remark like what she made to you just now,
shows that she thinks deeply and is perplexed--like some children
of larger growth--over the knotty problems of life," she
concluded, with a sigh.

"How is it, Miss Minturn," she went on, after a moment of silence,
"how do you Scientists account for the fact that a perfect and
all-merciful God--'the Father of mercies, the God of all comfort,'
as Paul puts it--has created a world of such confusion, wherein
evil and suffering, instead of peace and harmony, are the
predominant elements?--where, for ages, sickness and death have
relentlessly mown down generation after generation, until one
becomes heart-sick and weary, and even filled with despair, at
times, in view of their probable continuance for ages to come?"

The woman's face was flushed, her eyes somber, and there was a
note of passionate protest in her voice which moved Katherine
deeply; while what she had said proved to her that these problems
had been pondered o'er and o'er until her mind was almost in a
state of chaos regarding them.

While she was debating with herself what reply she could make that
would best meet her thought, her companion resumed:

"I am a dear lover of children, but when I see anyone like
Dorothy; when I see mothers grieving for their darlings, whom God