And Mary, listening, felt the comfort and the uplift of a strong faith that had learned to go unfaltering through the sorest trials, knowing that out of the worst of them some compensating good should be wrested in the end.

For months afterwards, whenever that bitter cry rose to her lips again, she stilled it with the remembrance of those words.

Sometime, somehow, even this terrible calamity should be made the stepping-stone to better things.

How such a thing could come to pass Mary could not understand, but Madam's faith that such would be so, comforted her.

It was as if one little glimmering star struggled out through the blackness of the night, and in the light of that she plucked up courage to push on hopefully through the dark.
That afternoon just as her trunk was being carried out, the 'bus drove up, bringing back its first instalment of returning pupils.