"I think so!" I say, recovering. "But please do not attempt to help me over, or we shall infallibly roll into the brook! Now, if you would not mind walking on and turning your back I can manage it quite well by myself!" He walks on, for he is a man of sense—a fool would stand on the other side of the stile and argue the matter for half an hour—and I am over it, and after him like a shot.
"Do you know," he says, as I join him, "that when I saw you come dancing towards me I could not believe you were mortal? I thought (laughing) that you must be the goddess of joy dropped out of a cloud, you looked so happy."
"And may not one be happy?" I ask, looking at him in surprise. "Are not all folks sometimes?"
"Sometimes," he says; "but moderately, not so overflowingly as you were."
"Ah! if you only knew all my troubles," I say, shaking my head, "you would wonder I could ever laugh at all! And yet I do, morning, noon, and night. I often think I shall be punished some day for having such a light heart."
"Fuller says, 'An ounce of contentment is worth a pound of sadness to serve God with,' so I don't think you will be heavily judged!"
"By the bye," I say, turning very red and dropping my voice, "when you met me just now you did not hear me singing, did you?"
"Of course! Why?"
"And you did not laugh?"
"There was nothing to laugh at!"
"I will tell you a secret," I say smiling. (May I not be confidential with him, since I knew him so many years ago, when I was quite little and childish?) "I would give the world to be able to sing, but I never could. It seems so natural to sing when
