"Thick shoes and a great deal of stepping about, make pretty hard work with stockings." "But, Mrs.Landholm! -- it would be better to buy new ones, than to try to mend such holes." Mrs.Landholm smiled again -- a smile of grave and sweet life- wisdom.
"Did it ever happen to you to want anything you could not have, Miss Elizabeth ?" "No -- never," said Elizabeth slowly.
"You have a lesson to learn yet." "I hope I sha'n't learn it," said Elizabeth.
"It must be learned," said Mrs.Landholm gently.

"Life would not be life without it.

It is not a bad lesson either." "It isn't a very pleasant one, Mrs.Landholm," said Elizabeth.
And she went back to her reading.
"You don't read my book, Miss Elizabeth," the other remarked presently.
"What is that ?" Mrs.Landholm looked up again, and the look caught Elizabeth's eye, as she answered, "The Bible." "The Bible! -- no, I don't read it much," said Elizabeth.

"Why, Mrs.Landholm ?" "Why, my dear?
-- I hope you will know some day why," she answered, her voice a little changed.
"But that is not exactly an answer, Mrs.Landholm," said Elizabeth with some curiosity.
Mrs.Landholm dropped her hands and her stocking into her lap, and looked at the face opposite her.

It was an honest and intelligent face, very innocent in its ignorance of life and life-work.
"What should we do without the Bible ?" she asked.
"Do without it! Why I have done without it all my days, Mrs.
Landholm." "You are mistaken even in that," she said; "but, Miss Elizabeth, do you think you have lived a blameless life all your life till now?
-- have you never done wrong ?" "Why no, I don't think that, -- of course I have," Elizabeth answered gravely, and not without a shade of displeasure at the question.
"Do you know that for every one of those wrong doings your life is forfeit ?" "Why no!" "And that you are living and sitting there, only because Jesus Christ paid his blood for your life?
-- Your time is bought time; -- and he has written the Bible to tell you what to do with it." "Am I not to do what I like with my own time ?" thought Elizabeth.