shouldn't say so if people were always having a good time, and if they were just right and did just right. But they are not, Mr. Masters; you know they are not; even the best of them, that I see; and things like this are always happening, one way or another. If it isn't here, it is somewhere else; and if it isn't one time, it is another; and it is all confusion. I don't see what it all comes to."
"That is the thought of a moment of pain," said the minister.
"No, it is not," said Diana. "I think it often. I think it all the while. Now this very afternoon I was sitting at the door here—you know what sort of a day it has been, Mr. Masters?"
"I know. Perfect. Just June."
"Well, I was looking at it, and feeling how lovely it was; everything perfect; and somehow all that perfection took a kind of sharp edge and hurt me. I was thinking why nothing in the world was like it, or agreed with it; nothing in human life, I mean. This afternoon, when the company was here and all the talk going on—that was like nothing out of doors all the while; and this is not like it."
There was a sigh, deep drawn, that came through the minister's lips; then he spoke cheerfully—"Ay, God's works have parted company somehow."
"Parted—?" said Diana curiously.
"Yes. You remember surely that when he had made all things at first, he beheld them very good."
"Well, they are not very good now; not all of them."
"Whose fault is that?"
"I know," said Diana, "but that does not help me with my puzzle. Why does the world go on so? what is the use of my living, or anybody's? What does it amount to?"
"That's your lesson," the minister answered, with a quick glance from his calm eyes. Not a bit of sentiment or of speculative rhapsody there; but downright, cool common sense, with just a little bit of authority. Diana did not know exactly how to meet it; and before she had arranged her words, they heard wheels again, and then the doctor came in.
The doctor approved of what had been done, and aided in renewed application of the same remedies. After a time, these seemed at last successful; the girl revived; and the doctor, after administering a little tea and weak brandy and water, ordered that she should be kept quiet where she was, the room be darkened when daylight came on, the windows kept open, and handkerchiefs wet with cold water be laid on her head. And then he took his departure; and Diana went to communicate to her mother the orders he had left.
"Keep her there!" echoed Mrs. Starling. "In the lean-to! She'd be a deal better in her bed."
"We must make her bed there, mother."
"There! On the table do you mean? Diana Starling, you are a baby!"
"She mustn't be stirred, mother, he says."
"That's the very thing!" exclaimed Mrs. Starling. "She had ought to ha' been carried into one of the bed-chambers at the first; and I said so; and the new minister, he would have it all his own way."
"But she must have all the air she could, mother, you know."
"Air!" said Mrs. Starling. "Do you s'pose she would smother in one of the chambers, where many a one before her has laid, sick and well, and got along too? Air, indeed! The house ain't like a corked bottle, I guess."
"Not much," said Diana; "but Mr. Masters said, and the doctor says, that she cannot have too much air."
"O well! Eggs can't be beat too much, neither; but it don't follow you're to stand beating 'em for ever. I've no patience. Where am I going to do my ironing? I should like the minister for to tell me;—or get meals, or anything else? I don't see what possessed Josiah to go and see his folks to-night of all nights."
"We have not wanted him, mother, after all, that I see."
"I have wanted him," said Mrs. Starling. "If he had been home I needn't to have had queer help, and missed knowing who was head of the house. Well, go along and fix it—you and the minister."
"But, mother, I want to get Eliza's things off, and to make her bed comfortably; and I can't do it without you."
"Well, get rid of the minister then, and I'll come. Him and me is too many in one house."
The minister would not leave the two women alone and go home, as Diana proposed to him; but he went to make his horse comfortable while they did the same for the sick girl. And then he took up his post just outside the door, in the moonlight which came fitfully through the elm branches; and he and Diana talked no more that night. He was watchful and helpful; for he kept up the fire in the stove, and once more brought wood when it was needed. Moonlight melted away at last into the dawn; cool clear outlines began to take place of the soft mystery of night shadows; then the warm glow from the east, behind the house, and the glint of the sunbeams on the tops of the hills and on the racks of cloud lying along the horizon. Diana still kept her place by the improvised bed, and the minister kept his just outside the door. Mrs. Starling began to prepare for breakfast; and finally Josiah, the man-of-all-work on the little farm, came from his excursion and from the barn, bringing the pails of milk. Then the minister fetched his horse, and came in to shake hands with Diana. He would not stay for breakfast. She watched him down to the gate, where he threw himself on his grey steed and went off at a smooth gallop, swift and steady, sitting as if he were more at home on a horse's back than anywhere else. Diana looked after him.
"Certainly," she thought, "that is unlike all the other ministers that ever came to Pleasant Valley."
"He's off, is he?" said Mrs. Starling as her daughter came in. "Now Diana, take notice; don't you go and take a fancy to this new man; because I won't favour it, nor have anything of the kind going on. I tell you beforehand."
"There is very little danger of his taking a fancy to me, mother."
"I don't know about that. He might do worse. But you couldn't; for I'll never have anything to say to you if you do."
"Why, mother?" inquired Diana in much surprise. "I should think you'd like him. I should think everybody would. Why don't you like him?"
"He's too masterful for me. Mind what I tell you, Diana."
"It's absurd, mother! Such a one as Mr. Masters never would think of such a one as I am. He's a very cultivated man, mother; and has been accustomed to very different society from what he'll find here. I don't seem to him what I seem to you."
"I hope not!" said Mrs. Starling, "for you seem to me a goose. Cultivated! Who is cultivated, if you are not? Weren't you a whole year at school in Boston? I guess my gentleman hasn't been to a better place. And warn't you for ever reading those musty old books, that make you out of kilter for all my world. If you don't fit his neither, I'm sorry. Society indeed! There's no better society than the folks of Pleasant Valley. Don't you go and set yourself up; nor him neither."
Diana knew better than to carry on the discussion.
Meanwhile the grey horse that bore the minister home kept up that long smooth gallop for a half mile or so, then slackened it to walk up a hill.
"That's a very remarkable girl," the minister was saying to himself; "with much more in her than she knows."
The gallop began again in a few minutes, and
