Miss Ellen

MISS ELLEN, the shears still in her hand with which she had been beheading Maréchal Niels, stood up and looked about her.

“It does seem as if the good Lord had given me more than my share,” she said.

The young man in clerical dress, lounging in a boyish attitude on the porch step, laughed aloud, and Miss Ellen’s own lips relaxed indulgently.

“You can laugh, but the oranges never set so heavy before, and just look at those magnolias and roses!”

She swept an angular arm vaguely forward, and, still smiling, he followed her gesture with a glance. Through the frame of tangled rose and passion-flower, he could see the beds of bloom outlining the path beside the orange grove, and the lawn, densely yet delicately green with the shade of temperate tropics, smitten here and there with the fire of pomegranate or the flame of a rosy oleander. From all about arose a chorus of birdvoices, confounding still further the limits of the scant acre, till, lost in the neighboring hedges of lime, of cypress and rose geranium, the place appeared to stretch vast and dim to the base of the far blue mountains. In the rear of the house a thrifty vegetable garden flourished on the sunny slope, and in front deep orange-colored balls glowed from the citrus depths.

“Now does it seem as if He intended all that for just one New England woman ?" asked Miss Ellen earnestly.

Paul Dudley’s eyes moved from the opulent landscape to rest upon his landlady’s spare figure, gaunt, graceless, pathetic, — the antique “backwoods" New England type, extravagantly intensified in this gorgeous environment.

“Well, I think, Miss Ellen, He knew what He was doing when He gave it to you. ”

“I only hope He won’t find me an unprofitable servant,” Miss Ellen responded soberly. “It’s worried me more’n a little since I came here, — how I’m ever to show Him I appreciate his gifts.”

“Are you trying to reduce them ?” — he spoke with intentional lightness, glancing at the clothes-basket heaped with fragrant color.

“ Oh, those, — I was just cutting a few for the Hospital Fair. Mrs. Lippitt stopped in half an hour ago to ask for some, and I expect her back any minute; — there, I guess that’s her, now.”

The young clergyman rose leisurely to salute one of his most important parishioners, as two fat horses, shining sleekly, sent a premonitory cloud of dust through Miss Ellen’s neat garden. So much gold blazed frankly from their harness and the livery of the grooms, so much more was discreetly hinted in the person of the lady who sat behind, that, in common fitness, gold-dust was the least such horses should have kicked.

Plump and cool and shining sleekly, not unlike the horses, and distinctly attractive in her crisp attire, the lady beamed down upon Miss Ellen.

“Dear Miss Ellen, one can always depend on you,” she said, conveying a subtle edge of the smile and the whole of a well-gloved hand to her rector. Mrs. Lippitt frankly approved the “Reverend Paul ” (his irreverent title of affection). She was of the number of his parishioners who held his tendency to weak lungs as almost a dispensation, since it removed him from the sphere of his uncle, the Bishop, and bestowed him upon a parish in every way capable of appreciating the rose’s vicinage, — lacking the rose.

“ I cut as many half-opens as I could,” said Miss Ellen, helping the young man adjust the heavy basket on the seat. “I do hope they’ll keep well.”

“They are divine! How I envy you!” and Mrs. Lippitt sighed a little. " Gardeners are such tyrants. Mine grumbles if I touch a rose, and Mr. Lippitt says those about the house are needed for decoration.”

“So they are,” assented Miss Ellen earnestly. “I often say how the Avenue houses would look if it warn’t for the roses. Now mine don’t do anybody a mite of good, shut in here, except Mr. Dudley and me. Besides, you rich folks have so many ways of helping, — I call it real kindness to give me a chance.”

“I am sure that is a very sweet way to look at it. We do have many calls upon us,” Mrs. Lippitt concurred gently, glancingat the Reverend Paul; — but the Reverend Paul was looking elsewhere. She sighed — gently also. “Well, thank you a thousand times, Miss Ellen.”

Miss Ellen gripped the offered hand warmly.

“Don’t you mention it. Mis’ Lippitt, — and any time you ’d like, I’d be proud to send you roses.”

“Real neighborly, — not a bit stuckup nor offish, is she?” she continued, beaming after the visitor still waving gloved acknowledgments as she whirled from view. “Now who’d ever thought it! Don’t it seem as if the Avenue folks had everything under the canopy ? — and yet come to think of it, there’s hardly one of them has a garden or a fruit-orchard, — not fling but a meachin’ little scrap of lawn that you can’t sit on, on account of the sprinkler, and a few stiff growing things to set off their houses, — and I don’t s’pose they feel a mite free to pick those. I remember how if used to be back in Vermont with our big purple lilacbush,— seemed as if ’t was robbing the neighbors to take a bloom off it. There’s Mis’ Howard, — nothing but stiff red geraniums near that outlandish foreign house of hers; I got up courage the other day and took her some long-stemmed, — and she came right up and thanked me; said the girls were wearing them to the Hunt ball that night, and they’d give anything to have such, the nights they went out. I told her I’d no call to sell flowers for a living, having all I needed, but’t was a pleasure to give them, and the girls were welcome to come round and help themselves. She seemed real pleased and said they’d surely come. I only hope they will” —

“They will,” said Paul Dudley, with reassuring conviction.

“Well, I certainly hope they will. It’s funny how little we think of such things,” ruminated Miss Ellen, leaning back in her chair, an absent look in her keen eyes, “but it’s come to me how little the Avenue folks do have to enjoy, — except money. Now, with your board, Mr. Dudley, I just make out to pay my taxes and water-rates, but I’ve got a whole raft of things they don’t have, — and so have all the poor folks I know. There’s hardly a cottage in Las Placidas but what’s got a garden and some room for the children to play around, and a couple of orange and lemon trees or so; but take the Avenue children, — scarce one of them has a place to play,— not what I call play,— and they ’re tickled ’most to death to come here. Mrs. Nason’s two, — since they’ve found they can swing on the big pine and make toad-houses in the ground, seems as if they could n’t keep away. Now that’s one thing I can do, — and the roses is another. It’s worried me dreadfully that I could do so little for the poor, but I guess if I can help the rich it ’ll come to pretty much the same thing in the end. They can help the poor. The little mite I make off my oranges and apricots don’t count for much, and the poor folks all have ’em; but down the Avenue they don’t hardly get a chance to know what a good orange is, for the shippers pick them green, and if they do get a good one, I ’m told they pay more for it than in New York.”

“They are able,” remarked the young man dryly.

“Oh, I know they’re able, but I do say it is n’t the same thing as a basket right off the trees, and then, the less they spend, the more they have to give. Why,” — she sat upright, glowing with earnestness, — “when I think of all that’s needed to be done right here in town, and how every one naturally goes to the Avenue folks for everything, I feel as if the little I could do for them was a privilege. I’m only grieved I did n’t see my duty long ago.”

“I envy you with my whole heart that you can see it so clearly now.”

The tone was both weary and bitter, and Miss Ellen leaned toward the speaker with a glance of troubled affection.

“Things trouble you, Mr. Dudley,— I can see that. Maybe they trouble you more than they ought. I don’t know but what you expect too much of people. You want to plant a seed and see it come up right away, — but that ain’t the Lord’s manner. There’s bound to be a lot of things that’s hard, in a parish like this. Poor folks take a lot of patience.”

“They don’t take mine,” said Mr. Dudley.

Miss Ellen looked diffident. “It’s the Avenue folks, then?” she ventured. “ I’ve sometimes thought they tried you.”

The young clergyman glanced up at Miss Ellen’s simple face of sympathy, shut his lips tight, and glanced hastily away — too late. He threw back his head and laughed a hearty, boyish laugh; but even in the laughter Miss Ellen’s quick ear detected a note of scorn, and she looked sorry.

“Mebbe you don’t allow enough,” she said. “Mebbe if you could get a new light on them, as I have, and see how much those poor creatures don’t have, you’d feel different.”

Paul Dudley rose to his feet and looked silently across the trees to the mountains for a moment.

“I’ll try,” he said.

“I would if I was you,” said Miss Ellen. “Now there’s one person I wish I could see my way to do something for, " — she fell to musing once more, — “ and that’s Miss Mayberry.”

The young man came back from the mountains with a perceptible start.

“I don’t know as you’ve noticed, but she’s looking real peaked lately;—she always does make me think of a church picture; — I would n’t wonder a bit if some of my fresh salad and oranges would set her up, — anyhow, I’m going to try. And there’s another thing,” —she rose energetically, — “I’m going to ask you right now to help me carry out that old settee to the entrance. As soon as I can, I ’m going to have a couple more made to put outside along the rise. There was a nice, sick young fellow from back East came in this morning and asked leave to sit on the porch awhile. He stayed most an hour, and we had a good visit. I cut him some Lady Banksia, and he said it did him lots of good. I’ve thought time and again that there ought to be seats somewheres for folks to rest, — with all the invalids there are in town and among the hotel folks, — but everybody’s business is nobody’s business, I guess. And I guess it’s full as much mine as anybody’s. They pretty much all come up here for the view. I ’m going to fix a dipper and cup at the hydrant, and a deep pail for the dumb creatures, — I don’t see how I never came to think of it before. The Lord knows I ought to be patient with folks, — I’m so slow myself.”

Stopping next evening to admire the effect of the settee and the shining new dipper, cup, and pail, the Reverend Paul was startled by the sound of a clear young laugh,— a laugh certainly not nearly so old as Miss Ellen. Quickening his steps, as he advanced within sight of the porch, a terribly well-dressed young person, who had been cuddling Miss Ellen’s kitten, rose with sudden dignity and put it down. Mr. Dudley felt distinctly sympathetic toward the kitten.

“Please don’t let me disturb you,” he said, casting a longing glance toward the step, himself.

“I was just going,” replied the young person, with that nice frigidity to which she had accustomed her pastor. “I merely came to thank Miss Ellen for something.”

“Miss Ellen is acting-missionary to my parish.” As he spoke, he lifted the rejected kitten in his arms.

“For mercy’s sake, Miss Mayberry, — I’m nothing of the kind!” exclaimed Miss Ellen. “I’m only trying to pay my own debts. Now I’m going to cut you some of those roses. Which rose would you think Miss Mayberry would favor, Mr. Dudley?”

“The flaming Tokay.”

The indignant exclamation of the girl was lost in Miss Ellen’s hearty laughter.

“There, you see, Miss Mayberry! — he don’t know a rose from a grapevine, let alone one rose from another.”

“Well, — I meant that flamboyant thing down by the hedge,” explained the gentleman, unabashed.

“The Archduke Charles? —for the land’s sake, why, now ?” ejaculated Miss Ellen. “Now the Duchess just favors Miss Mayberry’s coloring.”

“Her usual coloring?”

There was a silent exchange of hostilities, and the lady, gathering up her skirt and parasol with an air of finiteness, descended the path, down which Miss Ellen preceded her, snipping as she went. The kitten-nursing rector followed. There was silence, except, for the crunching of pepper-berries under foot.

“I hate Archduke Charleses!” exclaimed the girl.

“You always did,” observed her companion calmly, “and yet it’s the ideal rose for — the Avenue.”

“This is a dear old place.” The apparently irrelevant admission, with its accompanying sigh, drew a sympathetic smile from the gentleman.

“It is, — a perfect antique, — fifteen years if it’s a day. But Miss Ellen comes from the region of antiquities and ancestral traditions; she clings to the past. That cypress-hedge, for instance, — there isn’t a broker in town who has n’t pointed out how it would improve the place to ‘open it up’ by its removal.”

“Miss Ellen is an old dear,”proclaimed the girl defiantly.

“She is; and as I said, she is actingmissionary to my parish. Heaven knows it needs one,” he added under his breath, setting the kitten down.

Miss Mayberry glanced quickly at the bent head, but when the young man straightened himself up, she was airily punching holes with her parasol-point and gazing anywhere but at him.

“ It is well for us we have a missionary,” she remarked. “Our rector does n’t appear to think souls down the Avenue worth saving.”

“Your rector feels himself unequal to the task.” He threw back his shoulders as if shaking off a load, drew a long breath, and faced the girl with sudden confession. “ I shall have to clear out, I guess! The College Settlement was better than this. Even that came to seem rather an empty business, — but it was better than this. But for her” — he motioned toward the nodding sunbonnet ahead — “I should have cleared out long ago. Back there they looked bad enough, the old, old shams and sins and greed and emptiness! — but out here” — he swept his hands with a dumb eloquence of gesture which seemed to draw into one embrace the whole splendor of the sunlit spaces about them, — “ I can’t stand it,” he wound up briefly.

The girl’s hat did not hide a rising flush; her parasol point made vicious thrusts in the neat walk.

“I think Miss Ellen shows the more Christian spirit,” she said coldly.

“So do I.” He looked soberly over the green pepper-tops to the blue shapes beyond,— forty-five miles beyond. “We have n’t all her gift. I fear I ’m not framed for a cure of souls among the rich. Workers I understand, but these” —

She glanced curiously at the dejected face; her own suddenly cleared; she seemed to recover both her ease and good-humor.

“After all, you haven’t changed a bit in five years,” she said. “If I were you I would n’t throw up my ‘cure of souls’ too hastily. We really do have souls, you know. Give — Miss Ellen — another chance.” She shot at him a smile full of subtle meaning and mischief, and strolled on.

The young man did not follow; instead, Miss Ellen, returning from speeding the parting guest, found him patiently amassing pink petals from the dust.

“Mercy, Mr. Dudley! I can pick you a better rose than that, if you want one.”

“I don’t.” He stuck a stem and five sorry appertaining petals in his buttonhole. “ I only want to know a rose from a grapevine the next time I see one.”

“Well, you never will from that! You do beat all!” Then a look of satisfaction swept into Miss Ellen’s face as she surveyed the green settle and bright dipper shining against the hedge.

“I declare, it seems to me I can sit down with more comfort now I know other folks can sit down too. I’ve looked out half a dozen times to-day, and there’s pretty much always been some one resting there. Miss Mayberry was so taken with the notion she says she’s going to stir up the Avenue folks to fix some under the live-oak down below. Only I do wish that seat was shadier.” She cast a glance at the lofty cypress hedge enclosing her shadowed lawn, and an involuntary sigh escaped her. At the sound, she looked guiltily at her companion, but he was absent in those remote blue mountains where no sigh could reach.

His pastoral duty took him a long way toward them the next day, to visit a sick parishioner, and he drove home again in a golden glow of sunset which all seemed to focus naturally in a moment upon a square blue envelope lying on his supperplate. The first glimpse of the aggressive upright writing made him smile, and he laughed outright at the plump cheque which fell from a piece of paper neatly endorsed: “Please apply —‘on account’ — of Miss Ellen’s oranges.”

“My dear Missionary,”he began, jestingly holding up the cheque, and then abruptly laid it down. " What has happened ?”

“Nothing,” responded Miss Ellen firmly, across the table, “only I’ve had a fight and won; there’s a man coming tomorrow to cut down the hedge.”

Paul Dudley stared aghast. He knew how Miss Ellen’s New England heart reveled in that green seclusion.

“I’ve been real selfish about it,” — Miss Ellen’s lips tightened a little,— “and I don’t to say feel real generous even now; but it’s right, and it’s going to be done. The Lord never took me out of that barren Vermont to give me all this just for myself. I’m robbing the Avenue and Hotel folks every day of my life.”

The young man looked across the lawn with a knot in his throat. It struck no chord of humor in him, — this vision of Miss Ellen as the defrauder of opulence.

“I’ve heard say that when folks have everything, they get selfisher and selfisher,” went on Miss Ellen with a gulp, “and now I believe it! The man’s coming at seven,” she added in a business-like way, pushing back her chair. “I hope it won’t disturb you.”

But it did, — it disturbed him so much that at the first dull stroke penetrating his sleepy consciousness Mr. Dudley sprang up, painfully awake.

“It’s Miss Ellen’s hedge!” he thought with dismay. In ten minutes he was out in the garden. The first of the lofty cypresses was down, revealing through the gap the whitened road beyond. At the extreme other end of the place, Miss Ellen’s blue sunbonnet was bobbing about, busy, very busy among the blackberry vines. The young man pulled his hat low over his eyes and walked as fast, as possible, out of sight and hearing. He was half way down the Avenue before he realized it.

It was a magnificent triumph of a street, this Avenue which terminated on “the Rise,” before Miss Ellen’s entrance. Eighty feet of solid white glare (“We must build for the future,” had been the motto of its promoters) was flanked suitably by burning asphalt walks enjoying the nominal shade of alternated palms and grevillias, whose telegraphpole construction left nakedly visible the homes of the local Four Hundred. Souptablets, liver-pills, soap, and other useful and honorable products of a higher civilization had here their apotheosis, and flowered eccentrically in Spanish palaces, Colonial dwellings, Dutch mansions, and cottages called of Queen Anne, with nameless blends of all four, as if it had been proposed to sample climate architecturally. The whole was brought violently into a chaste harmony by strips of green grass tacked neatly down like a carpet to the asphalt’s edge, and ornamented with a mathematical sparseness of geraniums, calla lilies, or an unwandering rose tied to its own stick; and on every lawn the sprinkler was already at work disinheriting childhood against the coming day.

The young clergyman’s mind went back to the coolness and peace of Miss Ellen’s acre; he did not wonder that the young tribe of Nason yearned thither, nor that Miss Ellen’s fruit and flowers went at a premium in the homes of these destitute rich. The greater part of them were his parishioners, and often during his brief pastorate the smug betrayal of these too-revealing husks in which they sheltered had played havoc with his oversensitive nerves; now, in the light of Miss Ellen’s falling trees, a sudden perception of their immense pathos smote him instead.

“She is right!” he thought, “ no people in town stand so much in need of help!” And for quite five minutes the young man stood, a very beautiful expression on his face, sweeping with a kindling and kindly eye the blatant and beggared rows.

“Build thee more stately mansions, O my Soul! ” he murmured at last, and, giving his hat a little pull, strode on with a fresh and vigorous step.

This ardent mood bore him at last to the Avenue’s end, advertised to him by an Elizabethan dwelling set square to the road, and ingeniously combined with a Nantucket windmill, up which a solitary trumpet-flower flared by way both of shade and decoration. It smiled at him like a joke, — this absurd house; or was it his own subtle subconscious self which set him smiling in return ? At all events, his lips relaxed, but very sweetly.

“Duchess roses, indeed! — the utter fraud! ”

To refresh himself he took the first turning and went home by back streets set thick with rosy cottages in groves of orange, lemon, and almond, all breathing of the “immeasurable rose.” Breakfast was waiting on the porch when he arrived, and the whole upper front of Miss Ellen’s place was lying open in shadowy glimpses between tall pines and soft inward reaches of Bermuda sward.

“It’s a real improvement, don’t you think ?” said Miss Ellen brightly. “I’m going to move up the white oleander, and the man is setting the benches in on the grass. A whole load of Raymond tourists came by a while ago, and I let them help themselves to oranges. You never saw folks so pleased; they acted just like a party of children, — said it gave them a new notion of Californian hospitality. I declare, how grateful folks will be for the least thing!”

Paul smiled back at her.

“And you are not going to miss the hedge, after all ?”

“Oh, it seems a little out-of-doors at first, but I’ll get used to that, and I make no doubt it’s healthier; — the trees give a lot of shade. While the men are here, ” she went on happily, “I’m going to have them fix a little pond for the children, where the hydrant overflows. It don’t cost me anything but a barrel of cement, and you’ll see how tickled they’ll be. I’ve told their mothers to let them come up any time, — it brightens up the place, — only I hope it don’t disturb you at your studies?” she added anxiously.

He looked with silent tenderness at the thin, eager face.

“No, dear friend, — it does not disturb me.”

Later, indeed, he decided that it filled a long-felt want, when, coming home in the afternoon, he found a pair of children deep in the mire of the pond-edge, ably assisted by a child of larger growth warily reclined on the border of the grass.

“We are making toad-houses,” explained Miss Mayberry, raising a brilliant face at his approach. “I’ve something for you in my pocket, just ‘on account’ from Mrs. Lippitt, but I can’t give it to you now. Wait a minute,” — she rose, displaying a pair of hands caked to the wrists.

“We’ve had the finest time,” she elaborated laughingly, walking beside him toward the house. “Mrs. Nason can’t know what dears her children are, or she would never let them out of her sight. I never could quite share your enthusiasm for poor, dirty little tenementchildren, but nice, clean ones I love. They are just the perfect age, too.”

The young man’s heart contracted with an inward groan. Outwardly he only said, — “Clean !” with a little emphasis and an elevation of the brows as he glanced downwards at her hands.

The girl laughed.

“ Well, they were clean when we began. ’’

“Oh, — when even their elders have a depraved passion for toad-houses” —

But she had run laughing ahead, and while Miss Ellen with sympathetic haste produced soap, water, and towels, Paul installed himself with nice selection on a lower step, framed idly to command every fastidious grace of white fingers moving through clear water, or pinkly revealed against the whiter linen.

“Well, Miss Ellen,” he said, “I hope you are satisfied with these new fruits of your garden, — having corrupted even Miss Mayberry.”

“No,” responded Miss Ellen, “I’m not satisfied. I’ve got something on my mind.”

At the tone Miss Mayberry looked up interestedly, and Mr. Dudley removed his glance momentarily from the fingerplay to fix it on his hostess. Miss Ellen’s face was portentously grave.

“I want to make my will,”she said.

“ My dear friend! — surely you are not feeling ill?” exclaimed the young man anxiously.

“I never felt better; — but I’m liable to die, for all that. ‘In the midst of life’— My grandmother was taken in a moment in her chair. I want to get this place off my mind; it’s a great responsibility.”

The two young people waited in silence.

“ I want to draw up some kind of a paper,”— Miss Ellen’s voice grew more and more earnest, — “and I want to leave it so’s it ’ll do the most good. There is n’t a living soul has any claim on me, except the claim we all have got on each other. And I’ve been thinking the best I can do is to keep it for a kind of breathing-place for the Avenue folks and their children. The poor have the parks and take a sight of comfort in them, but the Avenue folks really need a place to get out in, — specially the children.”

Paul Dudley cast the first suspicious glance of his whole acquaintance at the speaker, but her thin face was without guile; her anxious eyes met his simply. He turned and deliberately scrutinized his other companion, but nothing was visible save the outline of one flushed cheek, a bending figure, and a hand splashing the water with reckless zeal.

“I don’t want it built on, nor yet speculated with,” continued Miss Ellen, “but just kept up, with the seats for the invalids, and the pond and the drinking cups, and a pail for the dumb creatures, and the roses for the hospital” — her voice dwelt in loving enumeration.

“You wish to make it a memorial to yourself,” suggested the young clergyman gently.

“Mercy! — no!” answered Miss Ellen energetically, “I want it for a memorial to the Lord, a thank-offering for his good mercies. But it’s more than I know how to fix it so’s the speculators and politicians won’t get hold of it. This land is real valuable up here.”

“You might leave it in trust ” — began Mr. Dudley.

“To me,” interrupted Miss Mayberry, raising a flushed face and stretching a dripping hand impulsively across the table to Miss Ellen.

“No, — to me,” said Mr. Dudley with decision.

“ I spoke first " —

“You have too many talents wrapped in napkins already.”

“I am going to unwrap them, — and leave them in trust to Miss Ellen.”

“ Mercy on us, child! ” exclaimed Miss Ellen, “you’ll outlive me by forty years.”

“Maybe, — but it gives me a claim.”

“I had no idea you were of such a grasping nature,” said the Reverend Paul, rising to his feet, “but it is no use” — he spoke determinedly. “In the first place, this is a serious matter.”

“And I am quite serious.”

“You cannot assume a trust and then throw it up when the mood takes you to go back East or” —

“The mood will not take me; you are the one to throw things up lightly, — like a cure of souls.”

Paul’s face flushed painfully. He was silent a moment.

“It was merited,” he said then, in a low voice, “ but — I am not going to throw up my cure of souls. I have seen a new light,”—and he turned upon the girl his face shining so solemnly with it that she drew back with a quick breath.

He made a step toward her.

“There is another reason,” he said, speaking a little unsteadily; “unless Miss Ellen casts me out, I go with the place.”

“I don’t care if you do,” said the girl defiantly, but she said it very low and caught her breath a second time quickly.

“I am not joking, Eleanor.”

“Neither am I.”

With a swift movement he took both the girl’s only faintly protesting hands in his.

“Dear friend.” he said, turning to Miss Ellen, “I don’t see but that you will have to leave it to us both, then, in trust. You see,” — his hand tightened on the trembling one within, “we have been engaged — more or less — for five years now, and now we are going to be married.”

Miss Ellen gave a little gasp.

“I — want — to — know!” she exclaimed. looking from one to the other. “Well, you have been pretty close about it!”

“It—it was generally so much less than more,” came in smothered explanation from under Miss Mayberry’s hat.

Paul Dudley laughed a low, happy laugh; he kept her hands closely in his, but his face, still full of that solemnity of light, was turned to Miss Ellen, and its reflection seemed suddenly to fill her own. She beamed kindly upon the two, — shining like spirits in that special consecration which had never come to her,— and another and equal love answered them from her patient eyes.

“Well, anyway, — I’m real glad,” she said, “and as for me, it’s just a crowning mercy. There’s nothing else to worry me on earth. I’ll make that trust-deed a thank-offering for your marriage, — and may the good Lord bless both it and you,” she added heartily, holding out her hands to them.