“‘Maybe it won’t do us any harm after all,’ said Sue more brightly;—‘or maybe you will be able to come back, father. Father, you know we are to talk over to-night the things that we have that we can’t be thankful for.’
“‘‘_In everything give thanks_,’’ said the cobbler.
“‘Yes, father, but it doesn’t say _for_ everything.’
“‘Perhaps not,’ said the cobbler. ‘Well, darling, we’ll see. Let’s have our supper first.’
“‘We’ll have the biggest fish to-night, father.’
“The fish wasn’t just out of the water now, but it was eaten with a good will; not quite so cheerily as the first one the night before; and Sue sighed once or twice as she was putting the dishes away, and didn’t step quite so lightly. Then she came to her former place in her father’s arms, and her head stooped upon his shoulder, and his cheek was laid to her forehead, and so they sat some minutes without speaking.
“‘Come, father,’ said Sue,—‘will you talk?’
“‘Yes, dear. Let us tell over what we have to bear, and see how we can bear it.’
“‘We must go to our ‘upper storehouse’ again for that, father.’
“‘The first thing, I suppose,’ said Sue, ‘is that we haven’t quite money enough.’
“‘We have just what God gives us,’ said the cobbler. ‘I’ll never complain of that.’
“‘Why you never complain of anything, father. But it isn’t pleasant.’
“‘No, dear,’ said the cobbler;—‘and yet if we had money enough, could we trust God as we do? It is a sweet thing to live at his hand directly; to feel that it is feeding us to-day, and to know that it will to-morrow; for, ‘was he ever a wilderness to Israel?’ No, dear; I don’t mean to say that poverty is not hard to bear sometimes; nor I don’t mean to say that I wouldn’t give you plenty of everything if I had it to give; but I do say that there is a sweet side even to this.’
“‘Father, our blue fish wouldn’t have tasted as good if we had always had plenty of them.’
“‘I suppose not,’ said the cobbler, with a little bit of a stifled sigh;—‘and maybe we shouldn’t know how to love each other quite so well, Sue.’
“‘I don’t know,’ said the cobbler. ‘I shouldn’t know what my little daughter can do, and bear, if she had not had a chance to shew me.’
“‘Why I don’t have much to bear, father,’ said Sue.
“‘Mother wouldn’t know what a good nurse you can be.’