It was a great satisfaction to Squib to have this talk.
“Seppi would have liked you to know everything, I’m sure,” he said in conclusion, “because it was you who helped him so when he was lame first. Isn’t it funny we should both he crossing in the same boat? It seems like a beautiful thing to me. I think beautiful things do happen to you, Herr Adler.”
“I think they happen to all of us, my little friend, if we have eyes to see and hearts to understand.”
Squib looked up eagerly into the kind face and said,—
“Oh, I think they do! I do indeed! Everything seems beautiful to me, I mean about going to Switzerland and finding Seppi, and being his friend, and meeting you and everything. I wonder whether it will go on being like that always! Do you think it will, Herr Adler?”
He was smiling in the way Squib remembered so well—the way that always drew the children’s eyes to his face in eager anticipation of his next words.
“I hope it will, my child,” he said. “There is nothing to stop it, unless we raise obstacles ourselves. Sad things may happen to us, but, as you have found already, sad things can be beautiful things too. Everything that comes to us from God has a beautiful side, if we can but find it; and with what is evil, and comes not from Him, we must have nothing to do. And the most beautiful thing of all is surely coming, and may come any day. We must always live in that hope, and then everything about us is beautiful.”
Squib did not entirely comprehend what those last words meant, but that did not matter. Children do not ask to comprehend all they hear; it is enough that they apprehend something beyond their ken which lifts their hearts upwards. The pair sat side by side for some minutes in silence, and then the boy said with a sigh of contentment,—
“I am so glad I have seen you again. Now will you come and see my mother? I am sure she would like it.”
After that there was no more private talk between Squib and his friend, but he kept by Herr Adler’s side, and enjoyed hearing him talk with his parents and uncle. They all liked him so much—Squib was quite proud of the fact. Everybody loved Herr Adler who came across him. As Squib expressed it, “They just couldn’t help it!”