“Wait till to-morrow,” said Preston; “just wait, and I will!”
So they waited.
All the afternoon Preston’s heart kept sinking down, down, like a plummet let into the sea, and his father’s heart sank with it, for a child cannot feel a sorrow that does not touch his parent too.
But it chanced in the night, as Preston lay awake, that he fell to thinking how his father loved him.
“He would do anything in this world for me. He’d take his eyes right out and give them to me if he could.”
And then Preston wondered if it were really true that God loved him better yet?
Oh, yes, loved him so that he would never, never let anything really bad happen to his little boy.
“So this isn’t really bad,” thought he, clapping his hands softly under the coverlet; “it seems awful, but it isn’t. God sent it, and I can bear it—yes, for his sake and father’s sake!”
“Surely what He wills is best,
Happy in His will I rest,”
repeated Preston, and went quietly to sleep “like closing flowers at night.”