“Just exactly,” said Miss Prissy, giving a shake to her silk; “and as Miss Twitchel said, in this case every providence seems to p’int.  I felt dreadfully for her along six months back; but now I see how she’s been brought out, I begin to see that things are for the best, perhaps, after all.  I can’t help feeling that Jim Marvyn is gone to heaven, poor fellow!  His father is a deacon,—­and such a good man!—­and Jim, though he did make a great laugh wherever he went, and sometimes laughed where he hadn’t ought to, was a noble-hearted fellow.  Now, to be sure, as the Doctor says, ‘amiable instincts a’n’t true holiness’; but then they are better than unamiable ones, like Simeon Brown’s.  I do think, if that man is a Christian, he is a dreadful ugly one; he snapped me short up about my change, when he settled with me last Tuesday; and if I hadn’t felt that it was a sinful rising, I should have told him I’d never put foot in his house again; I’m glad, for my part, he’s gone out of our church.  Now Jim Marvyn was like a prince to poor people; and I remember once his mother told him to settle with me, and he gave me ’most double, and wouldn’t let me make change.  ‘Confound it all, Miss Prissy,’ says he, ’I wouldn’t stitch as you do from morning to night for double that money.’  Now I know we can’t do anything to recommend ourselves to the Lord, but then I can’t help feeling some sorts of folks must be by nature more pleasing to Him than others.  David was a man after God’s own heart, and he was a generous, whole-souled fellow, like Jim Marvyn, though he did get carried away by his spirits sometimes and do wrong things; and so I hope the Lord saw fit to make Jim one of the elect.  We don’t ever know what God’s grace has done for folks.  I think a great many are converted when we know nothing about it, as Miss Twitchel told poor old Miss Tyrel, who was mourning about her son, a dreadful wild boy, who was killed falling from mast-head; she says, that from the mast-head to the deck was time enough for divine grace to do the work.”

“I have always had a trembling hope for poor James,” said Mrs. Scudder,—­“not on account of any of his good deeds or amiable traits, because election is without foresight of any good works,—­but I felt he was a child of the covenant, at least by the father’s side, and I hope the Lord has heard his prayer.  These are dark providences; the world is full of them; and all we can do is to have faith that the Lord will bring infinite good out of finite evil, and make everything better than if the evil had not happened.  That’s what our good Doctor is always repeating; and we must try to rejoice, in view of the happiness of the universe, without considering whether we or our friends are to be included in it or not.”

“Well, dear me!” said Miss Prissy, “I hope, if that is necessary, it will please the Lord to give it to me; for I don’t seem to find any powers in me to get up to it.  But all’s for the best, at any rate,—­and that’s a comfort.”