In thinking of this afternoon long afterwards, when it lay in the clear rounded distance of the past, Grace used to smile as she remembered her restless impatience, and compare herself to the little girl who was always pulling up by the roots the flowers she had planted in her garden, to see how they were getting on.

When they prepared to leave the little still room, Grace handed Geordie his precious “Third Primer,” which she found lying on the floor, and as he put it into his jacket pocket, he said with a smile, “I won’t bring it back with me, I’m thinkin’.  Ye’ll maybe tell us some more about the Good Shepherd next time, and I can hold at the spellin’ when I’m herdin’, and maybe I’ll soon be able to get into the Bible itself,” he added, still firm in his belief that the only entrance lay through the spelling-book.

Grace, remembering little Jean’s dislike to the exit through the dark passages, led the way to a door which opened into a path to the garden.  Jean manifested undisguised satisfaction when the dim still-room precincts were fairly left behind, and they got into the pleasant old walled-in garden, where the yellow afternoon’s sun was lying on the opening fruit-blossom, and bringing delicious scents out of the newly-blown lilac and hawthorn.  She kept pulling Geordie’s corduroys, to draw his attention to all that captivated her as they walked along the broad gravel walk.  This was certainly a much pleasanter way home than along the dim passage, and Jean decided that the best part of the afternoon had come last.  Presently Grace opened the door of one of the greenhouses, and they stood among richer colours and sweeter scents than before.  The children had been surveying with admiring wonder the dazzling house glittering in the sun, which was making each pane sparkle like a diamond, but they never dreamt that it would be given to them to enter it, or indeed that it had an interior which could be reached, so entirely did it seem to belong to the region of the sun, not to the world of thatched cottages and grey walls.

“Eh, but surely this will be something like the happy land you were singin’ aboot,” Geordie said at last, with a long-drawn breath, after he had wandered about in silence for some time, revelling in the exotic delights of the first greenhouse he had ever seen.

“Oh yes, Geordie; there will be all this, and a great deal more; things so beautiful and, glorious that our poor minds can’t even imagine what they will be like,” said Grace, glowingly, feeling a thrill of pleasure to hear that the hymn had any meaning for the boy, so desponding was she concerning her efforts.  “Look here, I’ll just read to you about the pleasant place where the Good Shepherd leads his flock, after their journey on earth is over.”  And leaning against an old orange-tree, Grace read to her little scholars about that wonderful multitude “which came out of great tribulation, and have washed their robes, and made them white in