as I shook up her pillows and begged her to lie down again. "No, it
is no good trying again just now, I am so dreadfully wide awake. Poor
Esther! how tired you look, being kept out of your bed in this way."
And she wanted me to curl myself up on the couch and go to sleep, but
I stoutly refused; Uncle Geoffrey had said I was to watch her until
morning. When she found I was inexorable in my resolution to keep
awake, she began to talk.

"I wonder if you know what pain is, Esther--real positive agony?"
and when I assured her that a slight headache was the only form of
suffering I had ever known, she gave a heavy sigh.

"How strange, how fortunate, singular too, it seems to me. No pain!
that must be a foretaste of heaven;" and she repeated, dreamily, "no
more pain there. Oh, Esther, if you knew how I long sometimes for
heaven."

The words frightened me, somehow; they spoke such volumes of
repressed longing. "Dear Miss Ruth, why?" I asked, almost timidly.

"Can you ask why, and see me as I am to-night?" she asked, with
scarcely restrained surprise. "If I could only bear it more patiently
and learn the lesson it is meant to teach me, 'perfect through
suffering,' the works of His chisel!" And then she softly repeated
the words,

"Shedding soft drops of pity
Where the sharp edges of the tool have been."

"I always loved that stanza so; it gave me the first idea I ever