xcept when the one deeper grief was stirred, always
arrayed with simple neatness, and surrounded with little tokens that
showed the constant presence with her of tasteful and thoughtful
affection. She did not know, nobody could know, how steadily, how
silently all this artificial life was draining the veins and blanching
the cheek of her daughter Bathsheba, one of the everyday, air-breathing
angels without nimbus or aureole who belong to every story which lets us
into a few households, as much as the stars and the flowers belong to
everybody's verses.

Bathsheba's devotion to her mother brought its own reward, but it was not
in the shape of outward commendation. Some of the more censorious
members of her father's congregation were severe in their remarks upon
her absorption in the supreme object of her care. It seems that this had
prevented her from attending to other duties which they considered more
imperative. They did n't see why she shouldn't keep a Sabbath-school as
well as the rest, and as to her not comin' to meetin' three times on
Sabbath day like other folks, they couldn't account for it, except
because she calculated that she could get along without the means of
grace, bein' a minister's daughter. Some went so far as to doubt if she
had ever experienced religion, for all she was a professor. There was a
good many indulged a false hope. To this, others objected her life of
utter self-denial and entire surrender to her duties towards her mother
as some evidence of Christian character. But old Deacon Rumrill put down
that heresy by showing conclusively from Scott's Commentary on Romans xi.
1-6, that this was altogether against her chance of being called, and
that the better her disposition to perform good works, the more unlikely
she was to be the subject of saving grace. Some of these severe critics
were good people enough themselves, but they loved active work and
stirring companionship, and would have found their real cross if they had
been called to sit at an invalid's bedside.

As for the Rev. Mr. Stoker, his duties did not allow him to give so much
time to his suffering wife as his feelings would undoubtedly have
prompted. He therefore relinquished the care of her (with great
reluctance we may naturally suppose) to Bathsheba, who had inherited not
only her mother's youthful smile, but that self-forgetfulness which, born
with some of God's creatures, is, if not "grace," at least a
manifestation o