own this day. I thank you, one and
all, for your feeling with me and my daughter Elinory. The rejoicing of
friends are a soft wind to folks' spirit wings and we're all flying
high this night. Get the children bedded down early, for they have had
a long day and need good sleep. Bettie, let Mis' Tutt walk along with
you and the Squire can come on slow. Don't nobody forget that it are
Sewing Circle with Mis' Mosbey to-morrow."

And, with more congratulations to the singer lady, laughs with Mother
Mayberry, and the return of a shot or two with Mrs. Peavey, the happy
country women dispersed to their own roof trees. The sorrow that had
come they had endured for the night and now they were ready to rise up
and meet joy for the morning. In the children of nature the emotions
maintain their elemental balance and their sense of the proportions of
life is instinctively true.

"Look, honey-bird, who's coming!" said Mother Mayberry, just as she was
turning to seat herself in her rocking-chair, tired out as she was with
the strain of the long day. "Run, meet 'em at the gate!" And up
Providence Road came the old Deacon and Eliza hand in hand, with Martin
Luther trailing wearily behind them. When she saw Miss Wingate at the
gate, Eliza, for the first time during the day, loosed her hold on her
old charge and darted forward to hide her head on the singer lady's
breast as her thin little arms clasped around her convulsively.

"Now," she wailed, "Mis' Bostick are dead and you'll be goned away too.
Can't you stay a little while, till we can stand to let you go? Poor
Doctor Tom! Please, oh, please!"

"Darling, darling, I'm never going to leave you!" exclaimed Miss
Wingate, as she hugged the small implorer as closely as possible and
held out one hand to the Deacon as he came up beside them. "I'm going
to stay and sing for you and the Deacon whenever you want me--if it
will help!"

"Child," said the old patriarch, with an ineffable sweetness shining
from his sad old face, "out of my affliction I come to add my blessing
to what the Lord has given to you this day. And I take this mercy as a
special dispensation to me and to her, as it came when you were
performing one of His offices for us. No sweeter strain could come from
the Choir Invisible that she hears this night, and if she knows she
rejoices that it will be given at other times to me, to feed my lonely
soul."

"The songs are yours when you want them, Deacon," said the singer girl