"O auntie," said Henry, "I wouldn't stop praying, but just learn to pray right. I can't tell all that God means by this, but it puts an end to a great trouble. I had been praying over it, but I never once asked for help to follow the White Line—" (glancing at the framed motto which hung at the foot of the bed) "straight through it all. I just begged God would take away the trouble, and I rather think," he continued, smiling faintly, "that he has."
Dr. Myers interposed. "I must not let you talk too much, my boy. I think God has you in his keeping, and is leading you onward. This trial may prove the greatest blessing of your life. Good morning, now. Rest all you can."
"Blessing," muttered Aunt Harriet, as she followed the doctor into the next room for directions. "I must say it looks like it, having to hobble through life on a stick, with no chance to do anything or be anything."
"I think, Miss Trafton," responded the doctor, "that you will see it quite differently by and bye. It seems sad, but I am not sure that Henry's chances of doing and being something worthwhile are not better than they were a fortnight since. I met him three or four weeks ago, and a more discouraged, dispirited appearing boy I don't often see. He did not tell me the trouble he speaks of, but I think I guessed it. There are worse troubles than broken bones."
At the gate the doctor met Mabel Wynn. "You'd better not go in now," he said, "the boy needs rest."
"How is he to-day?" she asked.
"Improving," he replied. "And, Mabel, he looks and talks like one who has been lifted up to a higher plane than a good many of us have reached."
"Does he know?" she asked.
"Yes, I have just told him. He says it is all right. He has never uttered a complaining word from the beginning. Somehow I can't help thinking that he will grow to have a rarely beautiful Christian character."
"And I have been so anxious about him!" said Mabel. "So faithless. I have sometimes almost doubted if he really understood what it means to be a Christian. He always seemed interested and attentive; but I feared he did not comprehend the truth. And of late he has often been absent front the class, and seemed to avoid an explanation. I could not understand it at all. But," she added, after a pause, "I suppose it was not necessary that I should. God takes care of his own."