a peep at the hills.  But you are right down amongst such niceness!  There’s the river, close by; you can hear it all night, tumbling along behind the mills and the houses; there are the woods just down the lane beside the bakehouse; and here is the door-stone and the shady trellis, and the yard crowded full of flowers, as if they had all come because they wanted to, and knew they should have a good time, like a real country party, instead of standing off in separate properness, as people do who ‘go into society.’  And the new bread smells so sweet!  I think it’s what-for and because that make it so much better.  Somebody came here to do something; and the rest was, and happened, and grew.  I can’t bear things fixed up to be exquisite!”

“That is the real doctrine of the kingdom of heaven,” said a sweet, cheery voice behind them.  They all turned round; Miss Euphrasia Kirkbright stood upon the door-stone.

“Being and doing.  Then the surrounding is born out of the living.  The Lord, up there, lets the saints make their own glory.”

“Then you don’t think the golden streets are all paved hard, beforehand?” said Sylvie.  She understood Miss Euphrasia, and chimed quickly into her key.  She had had talks with her before this, and she liked them.

“No more than that,” said Miss Kirkbright, pointing to the golden flush under the soft, piling clouds in the west, that showed in glimpses beneath the arches of the trees and across the openings behind the village buildings. “’New every morning, and fresh every evening.’  Doesn’t He show us how it is, every day’s work that He himself begins and ends?”

“Do you think we shall ever live like that?” asked Ray Ingraham, perceiving.

“’Then shall the righteous shine forth as the sun, in the kingdom of their Father,’” repeated Miss Euphrasia.  “And the shining of the sun makes his worlds around him, doesn’t it?  We shall create outside of us whatever is in us.  We do it now, more than we know.  We shall find it all, by and by, ready,—­whatever we think we have missed; the building not made with hands.”

“I’m afraid we shall find ourselves in queer places, some of us,” said Dot.  Dot had a way of putting little round, practical periods to things.  She did not do it with intent to be smart, or epigrammatic.  She simply announced her own most obvious conclusion.

“‘The first last, and the last first.’  That is a part of the same thing.  The rich man and Lazarus; knowing as we are known; being clothed upon; unclothed and not found naked; the wedding garment.  You cannot touch one link of spiritual fact, without drawing a whole chain after it.  Some other time, laying hold somewhere else, the same sayings will be brought to mind again, to confirm the new thought.  It is all alive, breathing; spirit in atoms, given to move and crystallize to whatever central magnetism, always showing some fresh phase of what is one and everlasting.”