“Aunt Joyce,” saith Helen, laying down her work, “I trust it is not ill in me to say thus, but in very deed I do alway feel ’feared of what shall be after death. If we might but know where we shall be, and with whom, and what we shall have to do—it all looks so dark!”
“Had it been good for us, we should have known,” saith Aunt Joyce. “And two points we do know. ‘With Christ,’ and ‘far better.’ Is that not enough for those that are His friends?”
“‘If it were not so, I would have told you,’” saith my Lady Stafford.
“But not how, Madam, an’ it please you?” asks Helen.
“If there were not room; if there were not happiness.”
“I take it,” saith Aunt Joyce, “if there were not all that for which my nature doth crave. But, mark you, my renewed nature.”
“Then surely we must know our friends again?” saith Helen.
“He was a queer fellow that first questioned that,” saith Aunt Joyce. “If I be not to know Anstace Morrell, I am well assured I shall not know her sister Joyce!”
“But thereby hangeth a dreadful question, Joyce!” answereth my Lady Stafford. “If we must needs know the souls that be found, how about them that be missed?”
Aunt Joyce was silent for a moment. Then saith she—