"But can't I help
you?"
She knew even as she asked the question that Toby was not prepared to
give her full confidence, and her own reserve shrank from asking for it.
Toby looked up at her with quivering lips. "Oh, you are good!" she said.
"I want to be good--like you. But--I don't feel as if I ever shall be."
Maud laid a very gentle hand upon the blue-veined forehead. "I think
goodness is only comparative at the best of times, dear," she said. "I
don't feel that I am specially good. If I seem so to you, it is probably
because my life holds very few temptations to be anything else."
"Ah!" Toby said, with a quick sigh. "And do you think people ought to be
made to suffer for--for things they can't help?"
Maud shook her head. "I am afraid it often happens, dear."
"And yet you believe in God," Toby said.
"Yes, I believe in God." With quiet reverence Maud made answer. "And I am
quite sure, Toby--quite, quite sure--that He never holds people
responsible for the things they can't help."
"Then why--" began Toby restlessly.
Maud interrupted her. "No, no. Don't ask why! The world is as God made
it. 'We are His workmanship.' Let Him do with us as He will!"
Toby's hands clenched.
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