ie, her only
sister, had lived together, and Janie had died there. The hands, aged
with work and deprivation more than with time, shake as they break the
seal, the aged eyes grow dim again and again as they read.

It is fully three parts of an hour before Brightie has got through the
letter--not that the words are many or hard to understand; but rather
that the hindrances are many. The glasses of the large spectacles grow
so misty from time to time that they require polishing. Then, too, Miss
Bright's mind exhibits foolish tendencies, refusing to grasp the meaning
of the words, and causing her to explain that she must be dreaming; and
still further she is carried back in mind to days long since vanished,
and scenes long unvisited, and these detain her long. But at last she
rouses herself--has at length fairly accepted the astonishing good news
her letter contains, and, with it open in her hand, hastens off to
communicate the same to her young friend.

Hazel's door is locked, and Miss Bright has to wait a moment before it
is unfastened. Hazel has been crying, and the tears must have been both
plentiful and bitter, for unmistakable traces exist, in spite of hurried
efforts to efface them. For once, though, Brightie is thoroughly
self-engrossed, and fails to notice even Hazel's face.

"I have such wonderful news, my dear!" she exclaims, the moment she is
admitted into the room.

Hazel expresses her interest, and, with her loving smile and tender way,
ensconces her friend in the one attempt at an easy chair her room
possesses, and then kneels beside her to listen.

"Well, my dear, you have heard me speak of my sister's house at
Firdorf?"

"Of course! Often. Where you used to live, and the flowers were so
lovely."

"Yes! and where the sweet white jasmine used to blossom, filling the air
with its delicious fragrance when we sat in the summer evenings beneath
the trellis work, in front of the dear old home."

As she speaks of the jasmine, old Miss Bright's hand is laid caressingly
on Hazel's hair, and her eyes--happily not too keen without her glasses,
or they would detect the tear marks--rest with softened look, full of
tender memories, on the girl's sympathetic, upturned face.

"There were always we three there--I, and my sister and her boy. You
have heard how the home was broken up, how Tom ran away, and how we lost
our money, and how Janie's spirit broke down under it, till at length
she gave up praying for Tom'