nameless, innumerable household duties.
Her voice was rich, and full, and womanly; and the singing was not the
fragmentary, sparkling gush of good spirits, and the mere overflow of a
happy temperament--it was a deep, sweet, inward music, as if a woman's
soul were intoning a woman's thoughts, and as if the woman were at peace.

But the face of Mrs. Simcoe grew sadder and sadder as Hope's singing was
sweeter and sweeter, and significant of utter rest. The look in her eyes
of something imminent, of something that even trembled on her tongue,
grew more and more marked. Hope Wayne brightly said, "Out with it,
aunty!" and sang on.

Amy Waring came often to the house. She was older than Hope, and it was
natural that she should be a little graver. They had a hundred plans in
concert for helping a hundred people. Amy and Hope were a charitable
society.

"Fiddle diddle!" said Aunt Dagon, when she was speaking of his two
friends to her nephew Lawrence. "Does this brace of angels think that
virtue consists in making shirts for poor people?"

Lawrence looked at his aunt with the inscrutable eyes, and answered
slowly,

"I don't know that they do, Aunt Dagon; but I suppose they don't think it
consists in _not_ making them."

"Phew!" said Mrs. Dagon, tossing her cap-strings back pettishly. "I
suppose they expect to make a kind of rope-ladder of all their charity
garments, and climb up into heaven that way!"

"Perhaps they do," replied Lawrence, in the same tone. "They have not
made me their confidant. But I suppose that even if the ladder doesn't
reach, it's better to go a little way up than not to start at all."

"There! Lawrence, such a speech as that comes of your not going to
church. If you would just try to be a little better man, and go to hear
Dr. Maundy preach, say once a year," said Mrs. Dagon, sarcastically, "you
would learn that it isn't good works that are the necessary thing."

"I hope, Aunt Dagon," returned Lawrence, laughing--"I do really hope that
it's good words, then, for your sake. My dear aunt, you ought to be
satisfied with showing that you don't believe in good works, and let
other people enjoy their own faith. If charity be a sin, Miss Amy Waring
and Miss Hope Wayne are dreadful sinners. But then, Aunt Dagon, what a
saint you must be!"

Gradually Mrs. Simcoe was persuaded that she ought to speak plainly to
Lawrence Newt upon a subject which profoundly troubled her. Having
resolved to do it, she sat o