its griefs and
cares.

And Margaret put back her wet, ruffled, grey hair from her heated,
tear-stained, woeful face, and listened with such earnest eyes, trying
to form some idea of the "Father's house," where her boy had gone to
dwell.

They were interrupted by a low tap at the door. Libbie went. "Anne Dixon
has watched you home, and wants to have a word with you," said the woman
of the house, in a whisper. Libbie went back and closed the book, with a
word of explanation to Margaret Hall, and then ran downstairs, to learn
the reason of Anne's anxiety to see her.

"Oh, Libbie!" she burst out with, and then, checking herself with the
remembrance of Libbie's last solemn duty, "how's Margaret Hall? But,
of course, poor thing, she'll fret a bit at first; she'll be some time
coming round, mother says, seeing it's as well that poor lad is taken;
for he'd always ha' been a cripple, and a trouble to her--he was a fine
lad once, too."

She had come full of another and a different subject; but the sight of
Libbie's sad, weeping face, and the quiet, subdued tone of her manner,
made her feel it awkward to begin on any other theme than the one which
filled up her companion's mind. To her last speech Libbie answered
sorrowfully--

"No doubt, Anne, it's ordered for the best; but oh! don't call him,
don't think he could ever ha' been, a trouble to his mother, though he
were a cripple. She loved him all the more for each thing she had to do
for him--I am sure I did." Libbie cried a little behind her apron. Anne
Dixon felt still more awkward in introducing the discordant subject.

"Well! 'flesh is grass,' Bible says," and having fulfilled the etiquette
of quoting a text if possible, if not of making a moral observation on
the fleeting nature of earthly things, she thought she was at liberty to
pass on to her real errand.

"You must not go on moping yourself, Libbie Marsh. What I wanted special
for to see you this afternoon, was to tell you, you must come to my
wedding to-morrow. Nanny Dawson has fallen sick, and there's none as I
should like to have bridesmaid in her place as well as you."

"To-morrow! Oh, I cannot!--indeed I cannot!"

"Why not?"

Libbie did not answer, and Anne Dixon grew impatient.

"Surely, in the name o' goodness, you're never going to baulk yourself
of a day's pleasure for the sake of yon little cripple that's dead and
gone!"

"No,--it's not baulking myself of--don't be angry, Anne Dixon, with him,