doing; but that first joy of
self-denial, the joy that is like fire in the blood, dies away; the
path seems drearier and the footsteps falter. Such a time came to
Rebecca, and her bright spirit flagged when the letter was received
saying that her position in Augusta had been filled. There was a
mutinous leap of the heart then, a beating of wings against the door of
the cage, a longing for the freedom of the big world outside. It was
the stirring of the powers within her, though she called it by no such
grand name. She felt as if the wind of destiny were blowing her flame
hither and thither, burning, consuming her, but kindling nothing. All
this meant one stormy night in her little room at Sunnybrook, but the
clouds blew over, the sun shone again, a rainbow stretched across the
sky, while "hope clad in April green" smiled into her upturned face and
beckoned her on, saying:--

"Grow old along with me,
The best is yet to be."

Threads of joy ran in and out of the gray tangled web of daily living.
There was the attempt at odd moments to make the bare little house less
bare by bringing in out-of-doors, taking a leaf from Nature's book and
noting how she conceals ugliness wherever she finds it. Then there was
the satisfaction of being mistress of the poor domain; of planning,
governing, deciding; of bringing order out of chaos; of implanting
gayety in the place of inert resignation to the inevitable. Another
element of comfort was the children's love, for they turned to her as
flowers to the sun, drawing confidently on her fund of stories, serene
in the conviction that there was no limit to Rebecca's power of
make-believe. In this, and in yet greater things, little as she
realized it, the law of compensation was working in her behalf, for in
those anxious days mother and daughter found and knew each other as
never before. A new sense was born in Rebecca as she hung over her
mother's bed of pain and unrest,--a sense that comes only of
ministering, a sense that grows only when the strong bend toward the
weak. As for Aurelia, words could never have expressed her dumb
happiness when the real revelation of motherhood was vouchsafed her. In
all the earlier years when her babies were young, carking cares and
anxieties darkened the fireside with their brooding wings. Then Rebecca
had gone away, and in the long months of absence her mind and soul had
grown out of her mother's knowledge, so that now, when Aurelia had time
and