n astonished. The faded eyes often grew dim with tears
as she looked at him--the frigid, unbending man--and remembered him
as he was in those first years of her married life, darling little
Johnnie in white dresses and long curls, running after butterflies
and picking flowers; if he only would kiss her once more, or do
something to make her sure that he was Johnnie, she was hungry for a
tender word from him. Ah! if mothers could see down the years that
stretch ahead, it would not always be so hard to lay the little
lisping ones under the ground. Was it decreed that most mothers shall
be in sympathy with that other one, of whom it is written, "A sword
shall pierce thine, own heart also"?

We shall never know about the wounds from those dear,
self-sacrificing mothers, but they are there, even though they may
strive to hide them and find excuses for the cold neglect,
indifference to their comfort, impatience, and the putting them one
side as if to say: "What is all this to you? It is time you were
dead."

"John is busy," she would say, as she mounted the stairs to her
lonely room, and he buttoned his coat and hastened away to business,
without a 'good-bye' or a 'good night,' then she would draw out her
knitting and knit on, often through tear-blinded eyes. Sometimes she
did not hear a remark the first time and would ask to have it
repeated, but the manifest impatience with which it was done always
sent a pang well-likened to a sword-thrust, but the dear mother would
cover the wound and think within herself, "I know it is a great
trouble to talk to deaf people, I ought to keep still."

Strange that these stabs come not alone from the lost sheep of the
family, but from the son who is the honoured citizen; from the
daughter who shines in her circle as a woman of many virtues; from
grandchildren trained up in the Sabbath-school.

"Into each life some sunshine must fall, as well as rain," and Mrs.
Kensett had much of hers from Benjie's letters; they were regular as
the dew and cheery as the sun, a balsam for the wounds in the poor
heart. They were not mere scribbles either--"I am well, and I hope
you are; I haven't time to write more now"--but good long letters,
with accounts of all his comings and goings, the people he met, the
books he read, here a dash of fun and there a poetical fancy; and
through them all ran like a golden thread the dear boy's tender love
and reverence for his mother. Never did maiden watch for lover