“My child, be not weary of well-doing,” she murmured, softly indeed.  “‘Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted.’  I was thinking, as I lay here alone to-day, beset by doubts and fears, of a passage in Baxter’s ‘Saints’ Everlasting Rest.’  The eloquent pastor of Kidderminster, living in the midst of bodily pain and persecution, had the true faith which is hardly attained in the midst of worldly prosperity.  It strengthens me to listen to his pious instructions.  Can you give me the words, dear?”

Clemence sought the book, and read this passage which her mother had indicated: 

“Why dost thou look so sadly on those withered limbs, or on that pining body?  Do not so far mistake thyself as to think its joys and thine are all one; or that its prosperity and thine are all one; or that they must needs stand or fall together.  When it is rotting and consuming in the grave, then shalt thou be a companion of the perfected spirits of the just; and when those bones are scattered about the churchyard, then shalt thou be praising God in rest.  And, in the mean time, hast not thou food of consolation which the flesh knoweth not of, and a joy which this stranger meddleth not with?  And do not think that, when thou art turned out of this body, thou shalt have no habitation.  Art thou afraid thou shalt wander destitute of a resting place?  Is it better resting in flesh than in God?  Dost thou think that those souls which are now with Christ, do so much pity their rotten or dusty corpse, or lament that their ancient habitation is ruined, and their once comely bodies turned into earth?  Oh, what a thing is strangeness and dis-acquaintance.  It maketh us afraid of our dearest friends, and to draw back from the place of our only happiness!”

“Oh, there is comfort in words like that,” said the widow, clasping her thin hands.  “When I think of the great souls who have lived and suffered, it seems selfish and wicked to murmur at my afflictions.  I will try to be patient unto the end.  Go to your rest, my love, and may God’s holy angels guard your slumbers!”

They were all in all to each other, this gentle invalid and her only child.  There is nothing that draws refined natures nearer to each other in this world, than mutual suffering.  And day after day the girl struggled on with her burden, while the elder woman could only pray that she might have strength given her from on high.  There are other cases like this on earth.  The mother and daughter are but the type of a class of earnest-hearted ones of whom few dream the worth.  As another has written, “there are many of these virtues in low places; some day they will be on high.  This life has a morrow.”

* * * * *

There was a long, cold winter approaching.  Clemence’s mind was occupied with the one question that is the burden of the poor in our cities—­“What shall we do in order to live through the inclement season, which is so nearly at hand?” She could get no work of the kind for which she was most fitted.  She had in the old days, a feminine love for needlework, and she thought, “Why not turn this to account?  I might manage to eke out a subsistence in that way.”