"Goodnight, Joe," and "Good night, ladies," passed, and the friends were left alone—alone upon the quiet beach. The sun had set, for it was late; the tide was ebbing, and now left the girls a beautiful smooth path of sand for some little distance, on which the sound of their light steps was scarcely heard, as they rapidly walked towards home.
"Who would think, Edith, that our six weeks' holiday would be at an end to-morrow?" said Emilie.
"I don't know, Emilie, I feel it much longer."
"Do you? then you have not been so happy as I hoped to have made you, dear; I have been a great deal occupied with other things, but it could scarcely be helped."
"No, Emilie, I have not been happy a great part of the holidays, but I am happy now; happier at least, and it was no fault of yours at any time. I know now why I was so discontented with my condition, and why I thought I had more to try me than anybody else. I feel that I was in fault; that I am in fault, I should say; but, oh Emilie, I am trying, trying hard, to—" and here, Edith, softened by the remembrance that soon she and her friend must part, burst into tears.
"And you have succeeded, succeeded nobly, Edith, my darling. I have watched you, and but that I feared to interfere, I would have noticed your victories to you. I may do so now."
"My victories, Emilie! Are you making fun of me? I feel to have been so very irritable of late.—My victories!"
"Just because, dear, you take notice of your irritability as you did not use to do, and because you have constantly before your eyes that great pattern in whom was no sin."
"Emilie, I will tell you something—your patience, your example, has done me a great deal of good, I hope; but there is one thing in your kind of advice, which does me more good than all. You have talked more of the love of God than of any other part of his character, and the words which first struck me very much, when I first began to wish that I were different, were those you told me one Sunday evening, some time ago. 'Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and gave his Son a ransom for sinners.' There seemed such a contrast between my conduct to God, and His to me; and then it has made me, I hope, a little more, (a very little, you know,) I am not boasting, Emilie, am I? it has made me a little more willing to look over things which used to vex me so. What are Fred's worst doings to me, compared with my best to God?"
Thus they talked, and now, indeed, did the friends love one another; and heartily did each, by her bedside that night, thank God for his gospel, which tells of his love to man, the greatest illustration truly of the law of kindness.