“How idle I am!” she said to herself, in the very words she had often used before she died; but then she was idle from weakness, and now from happiness.  She wanted for nothing.  To be alive was so sweet.  There was a great deal to think about in what she had heard, but she did not even think about that, only resigned herself to the delight of sitting there in the sweet air and being happy.  Many people were coming and going, and they all knew her, and smiled upon her, and those who were at a distance would wave their hands.  This did not surprise her at all, for though she was a stranger, she too felt that she knew them all; but that they should be so kind was a delight to her which words could not tell.  She sat and mused very sweetly about all that had been told her, and wondered whether she too might go sometimes, and with a kiss and a whisper clear up something that was dark in the mind of some one who loved her.  “I that never was clever!” she said to herself, with a smile.  And chiefly she thought of a friend whom she loved, who was often in great perplexity, and did not know how to guide herself amid the difficulties of the world.

The little Pilgrim half laughed with delight, and then half cried with longing to go, as the beautiful lady had done, and make something clear that had been dark before, to this friend.  As she was thinking what a pleasure it would be, some one came up to her, crossing over the flowery greenness, leaving the path on purpose.  This was a being younger than the lady who had spoken to her before, with flowing hair all crisped with touches of sunshine, and a dress all white and soft, like the feathers of a white dove.  There was something in her face different from that of the other, by which the little Pilgrim knew somehow, without knowing how, that she had come here as a child, and grown up in this celestial place.  She was tall and fair, and came along with so musical a motion, as if her foot scarcely touched the ground, that she might have had wings:  and the little Pilgrim indeed was not sure as she watched, whether it might not perhaps be an angel; for she knew that there were angels among the blessed people who were coming and going about, but had not been able yet to find one out.  She knew that this new-comer was coming to her, and turned towards her with a smile and a throb at her heart of expectation.  But when the heavenly maiden drew nearer, her face, though it was so fair, looked to the Pilgrim like another face, which she had known very well,—­indeed, like the homely and troubled face of the friend of whom she had been thinking.  And so she smiled all the more, and held out her hands and said, “I am sure I know you;” upon which the other kissed her and said, “We all know each other; but I have seen you often before you came here,” and knelt down by her, among the flowers that were growing, just in front of some tall lilies that grew over her, and made a lovely canopy over her head.  There was