"Do you mind telling me what it is?"
"Only that, whoever you are, your work is given you; you don't have to go into the highways and hedges to look for it. That queer boy, Harry Drinkwater, gave me the secret of it first. I asked him one day how it was that, in spite of all his handicaps, he managed to get on so well. He said he had only one recipe for success, which was wishing and watching, and watching and wishing. He said there was no door that wouldn't open to you of its own accord if you stood before it long enough with that Sesame in your heart. I remember his saying, too, that in the matter of work, desire—desire that's not wrong, of course—was our first point of contact with the divine, since the thing that we urgently wish to do is the thing by which we re-express the God who has first expressed Himself in us. The most important duty, then, is to find out what we really want, and then to wish and watch. Most of us don't know what we want, or, if we do, we're not clear enough about it, and so we get lost in confusion, like travelers in a swamp. Of course he said it all much more quaintly than I'm doing it; but that was the gist, and it helped to put me into the line of thought in which I've—I've found content."
"That is, you analyzed first what it was you really wanted to do."
"Exactly; and I discovered two things: first, that I didn't want anything half so much as to help—I've told you that before—unless it was the happiness of the people to whom I was nearest. I found, too, that if I began at the beginning and followed the line of least resistance I'd get farther in the end. Up to that time I'd begun in the middle, and so could get neither backward nor forward, as I used to complain to you."
Having thought this over, I said:
"You're fortunate in having the people to whom you're nearest close enough to you for—for daily intercourse and influence."
There was distinct significance in her response.
"Perhaps I'm fortunate in never having turned my back on them as long as they were in need of me. Do you remember how I used to want a home of my own? Well, something kept me at least from that. Whenever I came face to face with doing what I've felt free to do at last, there was always a second thought that held me back. If Boyd and Lulu had had children it would have been different. But Lulu didn't want any till—till lately, and so I felt that something was needed to ease the grinding of the wheels between them. I did recognize that. But now that they've got the little boy—"
"Got a little boy?" I said, in astonishment.
"Why, yes. Didn't any one tell you? Two weeks old to-day, and such a darling! One day he looks like Lulu, and the next like Boyd, and they're both as happy as two children. That's why I've felt free to be my own mistress, to this extent, at least. Things do work out, you know, if you'll only give them half a chance, and stop fretting. That's another thing," she smiled; "it came to me one day in church when they were reading the Psalms, though I'd often heard the words before without paying them attention. 'Fret not thyself, else shalt thou be moved to do evil.' I suppose people worried three thousand years ago just as we do to-day; and had to be told not to. Well, I've tried not to fret myself, and I've got on, oh, so much better."