“There must be truth in what you say, Hester, but it cannot explain every case. Sometimes there might be delay in carrying out a calling without that calling being frustrated. You think yours is to help the poor. But is it for you to say when you are ready? Willingness is not everything. Might one not fancy her hour come when it was not come? May not part of the preparation for work be the mental discipline involved in the imagined postponements? And what about our life beyond the grave? This life is but a beginning. While cultivating your gift and waiting the call, you may be in active preparation for the work in the coming life for which God intended you when he made you.”

Hester gave a great sigh. Indefinite postponement is terrible to the young and eager.

“That is a dreary thought, mother,” she said.

“Is it, my child?” returned the mother. “Painful the will of God may be—that I well know. But dreary, no. Have patience, my love. Your heart’s deepest desire must be the will of God, for he cannot have made you so that your heart should run counter to his will. Let him have his own way with you and he will give you your desire. He delights in his children. As soon as they can be indulged without ruin, he will heap upon them their desires. They are his too.”

Hester was astonished at her mother’s grasp and wisdom. The child may for years have but little idea of the thought and life within the form and face he knows and loves better than any. But at last the predestined moment arrives, the two minds meet, and the child understands the parent.

Hester threw her arms around her mother, kissed her, and went to her own room, understanding that if God has called, he will also open the door.

Scarcely had she reached it, however, when she heard the voices of the children shouting along the same corridor on their way to breakfast. In their eagerness to rush into the new creation, the garden of Eden around them, they could hardly be prevented from bolting their breakfast like puppies.

I will attempt no description of the beauties that met them at every turn. I doubt if some of the children in heaven are always happier than Saffy and Mark were that day. Hester had thoughts which kept her from being so happy as they, but she was more blessed. Glorious as is the child’s delight, the child-heart in the grown woman is capable of tenfold the bliss. Saffy pounced on a flower like a wild beast on its prey—she never stood and gazed at one like Mark. Hester would gaze until tears came to her eyes.