way?"

"Yes, wasn't he the sweetest baby!" said Mother Marshall, with a bright
tear glinting suddenly down her cheek. "Why, Father, sometimes I can't
really make it seem true that he's all done with this life and gone
ahead of us into the next one. It won't be hard dying, for us, because
he's there, and we sha'n't have to think of leaving him behind to go
through a lot of trials and things."

"Well, I guess he's pretty happy seeing you chirk up so, Mother. You
know what he'd have thought of all this! Why he'd have just rejoiced in
it! He hated so to have you left alone all day. Don't you mind how he
used to wish he had a sister? Say, Mother, you just stand on that
corner there till I get this tack in straight. This edge is so tremenjus
thick! I don't know as the tacks are long enough. What was you figuring
to do with the book-shelves, put books in, or leave 'em empty for her
things?"

"Well, I thought about that, and I made out we'd better put in some
books so it wouldn't look so empty. We can take them out again if she
has a lot of her own!"

"We could put in some of Stephen's that he set such store by. There's
all that set of Scott, and Dickens, and those other fellows that he
wanted us to start and read evenings this winter. By the way, Mother,
we'd ought to get at that! Perhaps she'll like to read aloud when she
comes! That would about suit us. We're rather old to begin loud reading,
Steve's always read to us so long. I don't know but I'd buy a few new
books, too. She's a girl you know, and you might find something lately
written that she'd like. It wouldn't do any harm to get a few. You could
ask the book-store man what to pick out--say a shelf or two."

"Oh, I shouldn't need to do that!" said Mother, hurrying away to get her
magazine, which was never far away these last two or three days.
"There's a whole long list here of books 'your young people will want to
have in their library.' Wells and Shaw and Ibsen, and a lot of others I
never heard of, but these first three I remembered because Stephen spoke
of them in one of his first letters about college. Don't you know he was
studying a course with those men's books in it? He said he didn't know
as he was always going to agree with all they said, but they were big,
broad men, and had some fine thoughts. He thought sometimes they hadn't
just got the inner light about God and the Bible and all, but they were
the kind of men who were getting there, striving after