UNOPENED PARCELS, 121

as long as you live think that, my child. I never
meant it.”

“ No, papa,” was all I could answer.

“Only,” he continued, “to human beings who
are liable to sin every day of their lives it is a
comfort unspeakable to believe that even that evil
may be turned to good ; that sin really repented
of and borne in our minds as a warning may
make us more specially watchful on that special
point than we might otherwise have been. That
is all, and it is a great deal, but I hope you did
not think I meant more than that.”

“Papa, I don’é think I thought much about it
at all afterwards,’ was my lucid reply to this
appeal, as he has often since told me.

He said, “ Quite right, Honor,” at the time, and
smiled, and bade me go and murder my bulbs as
fast as I pleased. Whereupon I protested, and he
went on to assure me that Lord Mayor’s day, No-
vember 9, was the only proper day in the year for
the setting of bulbs, and if I persisted in putting
them in the ground several weeks earlier—well, he
would not be answerable for the consequences.