e and discipline; but I have not
faith enough. My thanks are all up in grief before I have done--grief
that you have the struggle and the sorrow, without the support and the
full return which have been granted to me."

"You need not grieve much for me. I have not only had the full return
you speak of, but I have it still. It cannot be spoken, or written, or
even indulged; but I know it exists; and therefore am I happier than I
was last year. How foolish it is," she continued, as if thinking aloud,
"how perfectly childish to set our hearts on what we call happiness,--on
any arrangement of circumstances, either in our minds or our fortunes--
so little as we know! How you and I should have dreaded this night and
to-morrow, if they could have been foreshown to us a while ago! How we
should have shrunk from sitting down under the cloud of sorrow which
appears to have settled upon this house! And now this evening has
come--"

"The evening of Morris's going away, and everything else so dreary! No
servant, no money, no prospect! Careful economy at home, ill-will
abroad; the times bad, the future all blank--we two sitting here alone,
with the snow falling without!"

"And our hearts aching with parting with Morris (we must come back to
that principal grief). How dismal all this would have looked, if we
could have seen it in a fairy-glass at Birmingham long ago!--and yet I
would not change this very evening for any we ever spent in Birmingham,
when we were exceedingly proud of being very happy."

"Nor I. This is life: and to live--to live with the whole soul, and
mind, and strength, is enough. It is not often that I have strength to
feel this, and courage to say it; but to-night I have both."

"And in time we may be strong enough to pray that this child may truly
and wholly live--may live in every capacity of his being, whatever
suffering may be the condition of such life: but it requires some
courage to pray so for him, he looks so unfit for anything but ease at
present!"

"For anything but feeding and sleeping, and laughing in our faces. Did
you ever see an infant sleep so softly? Are not those wheels passing?
Yes; surely I heard wheels rolling over the snow."

She was right. In five minutes more, Margaret had to open the door to
her brother.

Hope had arrived at Blickley only just in time to drive Morris up to the
door of the Birmingham coach, and put her in as the guard was blowing
his horn. Mr Grey's