She went on waiting, and refused to be troubled.

True, she was not his bodily mother, but she loved him far better than the mother who, in such a dread for her child, would have been mad with terror.

The difference was, that Janet loved up as well as down, loved down so widely, so intensely, because the Lord of life, who gives his own to us, was more to her than any child can be to any mother, and she knew he could not forsake her Gibbie, and that his presence was more and better than life.

She was unnatural, was she ?--inhuman ?--Yes, if there be no such heart and source of humanity as she believed in; if there be, then such calmness and courage and content as hers are the mere human and natural condition to be hungered after by every aspiring soul.

Not until such condition is mine shall I be able to regard life as a godlike gift, except in the hope that it is drawing nigh.