ow. I won't answer for the future."

"We will accept the pleasant present. I don't fear the future. I shall
win your whole heart yet. Now let us drop all disagreeables and talk
about those we both love. Charlotte, what a baby you have got! Your baby
must be an angel to you."

"All my children are that to me. When I look at them I think God has
sent to me three angels to dwell with me."

"Ah! what a happy thought, and what a happy woman. Then your husband, he
must be like the archangel Gabriel, so just, so righteous, so noble. I
love him already: but I think I should be a little afraid of him. He is
so--so very unearthly. Now you, Mrs. Home, let me tell you, are very
earthly, very human indeed."

Mrs. Home smiled, for this praise of her best beloved could not but be
pleasant to her. She told Miss Harman a little more about her husband
and her children, and Miss Harman listened with that appreciation which
is the sweetest flattery in the world. After a time she said,--

"I am not going to marry any one the least bit unearthly, but I see you
are a model wife, and I want to be likewise. For--did I not tell you?--I
am to be married in exactly two months from now."

"Are you really? Are you indeed?"

Was it possible after this piece of confidence for these two young women
not to be friends?

Charlotte Home, though so poor, felt suddenly, in experience, in all
true womanly knowledge, rich beside her companion. Charlotte Harman, for
all her five and twenty years, was but a child beside this earnest wife
and mother.

They talked; the one relating her happy experience, the other listening,
as though on her wedding-day she was certainly to step into the land of
Beulah. It was the old, old story, repeated again, as those two paced up
and down in the gray March afternoon. When at last they parted there was
no need to say that they were friends.

And yet as she hurried home the poor Charlotte could not help reflecting
that whatever her cause she had done nothing for it. Charlotte Harman
might be very sweet. It might be impossible not to admire her, to love
her, to take her to her heart of hearts. But would that love bring back
her just rights? would that help her children by and by? She reached
her hall door to find her husband standing there.

"Lottie, where have you been? I waited for you, for I did not like to go
out and leave him. Harold is ill, and the doctor has just left."

CHAPTER XXI.

A FRIEND IN NEED.