"After school, I go for the drive with the Doctor, which I enjoy very much. I ask him about all the flowers along the way, and he tells me everything, and I have learned the names of all the birds; and it is much better, I think, than learning at school. And he always says, 'It's God's infinite love, my child, that has given us all these beautiful things, and these songsters that choir His praises.' When I hear him say it, I believe it, papa. I am very sure that the priest who came to see godmother was not a better man than he is.
"Then, very often, he lifts my hand in his, and says, 'Adaly, my dear, God is very good to us, sinners though we are. We cannot tell His meaning always, but we may be very sure that He has only a good meaning. You do not know it, Adaly, but there was once a dear one, whom I loved perhaps too well;—she was the mother of my poor Reuben; God only knows how I loved her! But He took her from me.'—Oh, how the hand of New Papa griped on mine, when he said this!—'He took her from me, my child; He has carried her to His home. He is just. Learn to love Him, Adaly. The love we give to Him we can carry with us always. He does not die and leave us. He is everywhere. The birds are messengers of His, when they sing; the flowers you love come from His bounty: oh, Adaly, can you not, will you not, love Him?'
"'I do! I do!' I said.
"He looked me full in the face, (I shall never forget how he looked,) 'Ah, Adaly, is this a fantasy of yours,' said he, 'or is it true? Could you give up the world and all its charms, could you forego the admiration and the love of all others, if only He who is the Saviour of us all would smile upon you?'
"I felt I could,—I felt I could, papa.
"But then, directly after, he repeated to me some of those dreary things I had been used to hear in the Catechism week after week. I was so sorry he repeated them, for they seemed to give a change to all my thought. I am sure I was trustful before, when he talked to me so earnestly; but when he repeated only what I had learned over and over, every Saturday night, then I am afraid my faith drooped.
"'Don't tell me that, New Papa,' said I, 'it is so old; talk to me as you were talking.'
"And then the Doctor looked at me with the keenest eyes I ever saw, and said,—
"'My child, are you right, and are the Doctors wrong?'
"'Is it the Catechism that you call the Doctors?' said I.