Tired as she was, Hester was charmed with her room, and the more charmed the more she looked about. It was old fashioned to her heart’s content, and seemed full of shadowy histories, as if each succeeding occupant had left behind an ethereal record, a memorial imprint of presence of walls and furniture—to which she would now add hers. In weary haste she undressed, ascending with some difficulty the high four-post bed which stood waiting for her like an altar of sleep.

She awoke to a blaze of sunlight. The night had passed and carried the tears of the day with it. Ah, how much is done in the night when we sleep and know nothing! Things never stop. The sun was shining as if he too had wept and repented. All the earth beneath him was like the face of a child who has ceased to weep and begun to smile, but has not yet wiped away his tears.

Raindrops everywhere! millions upon millions of them! every one of them with a sun in it! Hester had sprung from her bed and opened the curtains. How different was the sight from what she saw when she looked out in Addison Square. If heaven be as different from this earth, and as much better than it, we shall indeed be happy children. On each side she saw green, undulating lawn, with trees and meadows beyond. Just in front, the grassy lawn sloped rapidly, grew steep, and fell into the swift river—which, now swollen from the rains, went rolling and sliding, brown and heavy toward the far-off sea. Beyond the river, the bank rose into a wooded hill. She could see walks winding through the wood, here appearing, there vanishing, and a little way up the valley, the rails of a rustic bridge that led them to it.

It was a paradise! In place of the roar of London along Oxford Street, there was the sound of the river. In place of the cries of rough human voices, the soprano of birds and the soft mellow bass of the cattle in the meadows. The sky was a shining blue. Not a cloud was to be seen upon it. Quietly it looked down as if saying to the world over which it stood, “Yes, you are welcome to it all!”

She thanked God for the country, but soon was praying for the town. The neighbourly country offered to console her for the loss of the town she received, but then she remembered that God cared more for one miserable, selfish, wife-and-donkey-beating ironmonger in London than for all the hills and dales of Cumberland, and all the starry things of his heavens.

Dressing quickly, she went to her mother’s room. Her father was already outdoors, but her mother was having breakfast in bed.

“What a lovely place it is, mama! You did not say half enough about it,” exclaimed Hester.