and be comfortable. You can bear as much of me
as that,--can't you, mamma?" Then Mrs. Dale put her arm over Lily's
shoulder, and embraced her daughter. "And now, mamma, we will talk
about this wonderful letter."

"I do not know, dear, that I have anything to say about it."

"But you must have something to say about it, mamma. You must bring
yourself to have something to say,--to have a great deal to say."

"You know what I think as well as though I talked for a week."

"That won't do, mamma. Come, you must not be hard with me."

"Hard, Lily!"

"I don't mean that you will hurt me, or not give me any food,--or
that you will not go on caring about me more than anything else in
the whole world ten times over;--" And Lily as she spoke tightened
the embrace of her mother's arm round her neck. "I'm not afraid
you'll be hard in that way. But you must soften your heart so as to
be able to mention his name and talk about him, and tell me what I
ought to do. You must see with my eyes, and hear with my ears, and
feel with my heart;--and then, when I know that you have done that,
I must judge with your judgment."

"I wish you to use your own."

"Yes;--because you won't see with my eyes and hear with my ears.
That's what I call being hard. Though you should feed me with blood
from your breast, I should call you a hard pelican, unless you could
give me also the sympathy which I demand from you. You see, mamma, we
have never allowed ourselves to speak of this man."

"What need has there been, dearest?"

"Only because we have been thinking of him. Out of the full heart the
mouth speaketh;--that is, the mouth does so when the full heart is
allowed to have its own way comfortably."

"There are things which should be forgotten."

"Forgotten, mamma!"

"The memory of which should not be fostered by much talking."

"I have never blamed you, mamma; never, even in my heart. I have
known how good and gracious and sweet you have been. But I have often
accused myself of cowardice because I have not allowed his name to
cross my lips either to you or to Bell. To talk of forgetting such an
accident as that is a farce. And as for fostering the memory of it--!
Do you think that I have ever spent a night from that time to this
without thinking of him? Do you imagine that I have ever crossed
our own lawn, or gone down through the garden-path there, without
thinking of the times when he and I walked there together? There
needs no foster