Her companion shook his head. "Fevers of body are bad, but fevers of mind are worse. Will you take me for your doctor, child, and let me help you to find the sane, sweet, capable Sylvia Lacey who manifests her inheritance from the Father of us all?"
The girl's eyes grew moist, and she bit her lip. Her poor, vain sense struggled, but she was sore at the heart which this tone of his always pressed strangely.
"I'd better go away," she said in a voice that trembled.
Her companion placed a kind hand on her shoulder. "If you were to go away, you would not escape from Love," he answered. "Love enfolds you this moment and all moments. It needs only to be recognized and trusted to begin its transforming work in your consciousness. Even life is only consciousness, Sylvia, and you cannot be conscious without thinking. Then what it means to guard the thought,—to think truth, and not falsity!"
"How are we to know when we are thinking truth?" returned the girl, her breast heaving.
"As we are told to judge everything,—by its fruits. The fruit of your thinking has not brought you happiness; then let us get a new set of thoughts. That is all you need to begin with, Sylvia, a new set of thoughts; and you can't get them until you welcome a new guest into your heart." He paused.
"Who? You?" asked the girl.
Her companion smiled. "No, not I, little one. The guest's name is Humility." He waited a moment and then proceeded. "You are entertaining two guests now who are eating you out of house and home; devouring your substance literally. Their names are Vanity and Self-love. Vanity has a thin skin, is very easily injured. The other one whispers to you to hate your aunt and uncle, and to be jealous of Edna Derwent. They can't stay where Humility enters. Take her in. Listen to her. She will whisper to you that it isn't of so much consequence what comes to the Sylvia Lacey you are conscious of at present. She will promise you that if you will listen to her and make her your own, you will learn a happier Sylvia, a better consciousness in God's good time. 'Great peace have they who love His law. Nothing shall offend them.' What a new world you would enter, my girl, when you found that nothing could give you offense!"
A strange wrestling was going on in his listener's breast and her breathing was unsteady. Seeing that she was not ready to speak, Thinkright proceeded:—
"You have heard of the Brotherhood of Man. It isn't a mere phrase when you think right. All,—all of us, children of one Father, all with rights to the same inheritance, what should make us cold or grudging, one toward another? What is to prevent our spontaneous gladness in another's success. His happiness and good fortune become ours. It is all in the family, you see. There are no limitations to be placed on an infinite inheritance, are there? Our Father's love is impartial, and all that we ask in His name He has promised to give us. You couldn't ask in His name to eclipse Edna Derwent, could you? or to receive any other gift which would appeal to those two guests I hope you will turn out. These are small beginnings of great thoughts, Sylvia, but they point to that 'large place' where your consciousness belongs, and where Love waits to lead you."