"Oh, Walter, if we could always have been children!" she sobbed.
"It wouldn't have been good for us, I fancy," said the brother, quietly.
"I know it couldn't have been, except we had died before we could be grown-up; and then we should have been children always and for ever, I suppose?"
"We can be children now, in one sense," said Walter. "The Bible tells us that except we be converted and become as little children, we cannot see the kingdom of heaven. I should like to think of us both as being children in that way."
"Oh, Walter, I wish you could teach me that way, and help me on in it, for I am very, very miserable sometimes; and I know I am not fit for anything good."
"My dear Elizabeth, I suppose we are none of us fit for anything good till we are made so by a power above our own; but we can ask for that power, you know."
"Yes, that is what we are told always, every Sunday at least, in church; but somehow—But I don't want to be talking about myself, and don't mean to," she added, suddenly breaking off, and, as it seemed, angry with herself for showing any emotion. "Only I was saying that if we had always been children together, I shouldn't have been such a mischief-maker as I was afterwards; and you might have stopped in England, and got rich, and been well at this present time, and—there! How stupid that is, for if we had never grown-up, you wouldn't have been able to get money, I expect; and I don't know what I am saying, only I mean that everything would have been so different from what it is; you know it would, Walter."
Elizabeth said all this so rapidly and earnestly, though confusedly, that it seemed as though she were battling with some inward foe whom she was determined to beat down by force of words, if not of argument. She spoke so earnestly that her brother, weak and suffering as he was, could not help smiling.
"I daresay many things would have been different, Elizabeth, if certain other things had not happened, or had not been spoken," said he; "but perhaps they wouldn't have been better, after all."
"I wish you could make that plain to me, Walter."