while you live on this earth. Trust in my promise, for it is true.”
“We do trust you!” cried Epimetheus and Pandora, both in one breath.
And so they did; and not only they, but so has everybody trusted Hope, that has since been alive. And to tell you the truth, I cannot help being glad — (though, to be sure, it was an uncommonly naughty thing for her to do) — but I cannot help being glad that our foolish Pandora peeped into the box. No doubt — no doubt — the Troubles are still flying about the world, and have increased in multitude, rather than lessened, and are a very ugly set of imps, and carry most venomous stings in their tails. I have felt them already, and expect to feel them more, as I grow older. But then that lovely and lightsome little figure of Hope! What in the world could we do without her? Hope spiritualizes the earth; Hope makes it always new; and, even in the earth’s best and brightest aspect, Hope shows it to be only the shadow of an infinite bliss hereafter.
AFTER THE STORY
PRIMROSE,” asked Eustace, pinching her ear, “how do you like my little Pandora? Don’t you think her the exact picture of yourself? But you would not have hesitated half so long about opening the box.”
“Then I should have been well punished for my naughtiness,” retorted Primrose, smartly; “for the first thing to pop out, after the lid was lifted, would have been Mr. Eustace Bright, in the shape of a Trouble.”
“Cousin Eustace,” said Sweet Fern, “did the box hold all the trouble that has ever come into the world?”
“Every mite of it!” answered Eustace. “This very snowstorm, which has spoiled my skating, was packed up there.”
“And how big was the box?” asked Sweet Fern.
“Why, perhaps three feet long,” said Eustace, “two feet wide, and two feet and a half high.”
“Ah,” said the child, “you are making fun of me, Cousin Eustace! I know there is not trouble enough in the world to fill such a great box as that. As for the snowstorm, it is no trouble at all, but a pleasure; so it could not have been in the box.”
“Hear the child!” cried Primrose, with an air of superiority. “How little he knows about the troubles of this world! Poor fellow! He will be wiser when he has seen as much of life as I have.”
So saying, she began to skip the rope.
Meantime, the day was drawing towards its close. Out of doors the scene certainly looked dreary. There was a gray drift, far and wide, through the gathering twilight; the earth was as pathless as the air; and the bank of snow over the steps of the porch proved that nobody had entered or gone out for a good many hours past. Had there been only one child at the window of Tanglewood, gazing at this wintry prospect, it would perhaps have made him sad. But half a dozen children together, though they cannot quite turn the world into a paradise, may defy old Winter and all his storms to put them out of spirits. Eustace Bright, moreover, on the spur of the moment, invented several new kinds of play, which kept them all in a roar of merriment till bedtime, and served for the next stormy day besides.
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