Mrs.Gum sank into a state of wild despair.
At first it almost seemed to threaten loss of reason.

Her son had been her sole idol, and the idol was shattered.

But to witness unreasonably violent grief in others always has a counteracting effect on our own, and Mr.Gum soothed his sorrow and brought philosophy to his aid.
"Look you," said he, one day, sharply to his wife, when she was crying and moaning, "there's two sides to every calamity,--a bright and a dark 'un;" for Mr.Gum was not in the habit of treating his wife, in the privacy of their domestic circle, to the quality-speech kept for the world.

"He is gone, and we can't help it; we'd have welcomed him home if we could, and killed the fatted calf, but it was God's will that it shouldn't be.

There may be a blessing in it, after all.