rk fall.
"How do you do? I am glad to see you! Welcome home again!"

As she spoke quickly and earnestly, she held out her hand, and
grasped that of her old domestic warmly. Rachel could not speak, but
as she left the room she put her apron to her eyes. Hers were
not the only ones dim with rising moisture.

For at least a year to come, both Mrs. Smith and her excellent cook
will have no cause to complain of each other. How they will get
along during the last week of next August, we cannot say, but hope
the lesson they have both received will teach them to bear and
forbear.

CHAPTER XXIII.

WORDS.

"THE foolish thing!" said my aunt Rachel, speaking warmly, "to get
hurt at a mere word. It's a little hard that people can't open their
lips but somebody is offended."

"Words are things!" said I, smiling.

"Very light things! A person must be tender, indeed, that is hurt by
a word."

"The very lightest thing may hurt, if it falls on a tender place."

"I don't like people who have these tender places," said aunt
Rachel. "I never get hurt at what is said to me. No--never! To be
ever picking and mincing, and chopping off your words--to be afraid
to say this or that--for fear somebody will be offended! I can't
abide it!"

"People who have these tender places can't help it, I suppose. This
being so, ought we not to regard their weakness?" said I. "Pain,
either of body or mind, is hard to bear, and we should not inflict
it causelessly."

"People who are so wonderfully sensitive," replied aunt Rachel,
growing warmer, "ought to shut themselves up at home, and not come
among sensible, good tempered persons. As far as I am concerned, I
can tell them, one and all, that I am not going to pick out every
hard word from a sentence as carefully as I would seeds from a
raisin. Let them crack them with their teeth, if they are afraid to
swallow them whole."

Now, for all that aunt Rachel went on after this strain, she was a
kind, good soul, in the main, and I could see, was sorry for having
hurt the feelings of Mary Lane. But she didn't like to acknowledge
that she was in the wrong; that would detract too much from the
self-complacency with which she regarded herself. Knowing her
character very well, I thought it best not to continue the little
argument about the importance of words, and so changed the subject.
But, every now and then, aunt Rachel would return to it, each time
softening a little towards Mary. At last