The china cleansed, and put away, I stood surveying the shining pieces that comprised our breakfast equipage, and like the tired clock in the fable, thought wearily of the many hundred times Mrs. Flaxman had washed those dishes; of the many thousand times they, or others, would go through the same operation, until Mrs. Winthrop’s sands of time had all run out, and Oaklands gone to decay, or passed into other hands.

“Isn’t it tiresome work washing dishes—­the same yesterday, to-day and fifty years hence?  I wish I had been created a man; they don’t have such sameness in their work.”

“Are you sure, dear?  Fancy a bookkeeper’s lot, or a clerk’s reckoning up columns of figures so like there is not a particle of variety; not a new or thrilling idea in all their round of work from January to December, unless we except a column that won’t come right.  That may have a thrill in it now and then, but certainly not a joyous one.  After we return from New York, if you pay attention to a clerk’s work in the stores we visit, you will acknowledge a lady’s household tasks delightful in comparison.  The farmer’s life has the most variety, and comes nearest to elementary things and nature’s great throbbing vitals; but as a rule they are a dissatisfied lot, and unreasonably so, I think.”

“Come to look at things generally, it’s a very unsatisfactory sort of world, anyway.  I think it’s affairs might just as well get wound up as not.  There have been plenty of one variety of beings created, I should think, to fill up lots of room in the starry spaces, and there are so many to suffer forever.”

“It is hardly reverent, dear, for us to criticise God’s plans.  It is His world, and we are His creatures; and we may all be happy in Him here, and there be happy with Him forever.  Besides, life does not seem monotonous when we are doing His will.”

“But I know so few who are doing His will save you, and that poor blind Mr. Bowen.  I read my Bible every day, and sometimes I get thinking over its words, and I reckon there will only be one here and there fit to enter Heaven.  All our friends nearly would be terribly out of place to be suddenly transplanted to the Heavenly gardens.  What could they talk about to the shining ones?  The fashions, and social gossips, and fancy work and amusements would all be tabooed subjects there, I expect.”

“You do not know many people yet.  I thank God there are thousands longing to serve Him.  I think, dear, you must have a touch of dyspepsia this morning; your thoughts are so morbid.”

“Oh no, indeed; I am quite well.  But shall we see any of those people you describe in New York?”

“If we stay long enough, doubtless we shall.  I have a few rare friends there whose friendship often gives me the feeling of possessing unlimited riches.”

“I wish I had such friends,” I exclaimed, with sudden longing.  “You and the Mill Road folk are the only ones I have on this side the ocean, and the most I care much for on the other already think in another language from mine.”