"I didn't mean to speak of myself," Diana said, making a tremendous effort to bring out her words unconcernedly; "but I get utterly puzzled sometimes, Mother Bartlett, when I see such things happen—such things as do happen, and to good people too."
"You ain't the fust one that's been puzzled that way," returned the old woman. "Job was all out in his reckoning once; and David was as stupid as a beast, he says. But when chillen gets into the dark, they're apt to run agin sun'thin' and hurt theirselves. Stay in the light, dear."
"How can one, always?"
"O, child, jes' believe the Lord's word. That'll keep you near him; and there is no darkness where he is."
"What is his word, that I must believe?—about this, I mean."
"That he loves us, dear; loves us tender and true; like you love your little baby, only a deal more; and truer, and tenderer. For a woman may forget her sucking child, but he never will forget. And all things he will make to 'work together for good to them that love him.'"
Diana shook and trembled with the effort to command herself and not burst into a storm of weeping, which would have betrayed what she did not choose to betray. She sat by the bedpost, clasping it, and with the same clasp as it were holding herself. For a moment she had "forgotten her sucking child,"—the words came home; and it was only by that convulsive hold of herself that she could keep from crying out. With her face turned away from the sick woman, she waited till the convulsion had passed; and then said in measured, deliberate accents,
"It is hard to see how some things can turn out for good—some things I have known."
"Well, you ain't infinite, be you?" said Mrs. Bartlett. "You can't see into the futur'; and what's more, you can't see into the present. You don't know what's goin' on in your own heart—not as he knows it. No more you ain't almighty to change things. If I was you, I would jest trust him that is all-wise, and knows everything, and almighty and kin do what he likes."
"Then why don't he make people good?"