e can try
to make the waiting as useful and pleasant as possible. This painful
little back will be a sort of conscience to remind you of what you ought
to do and leave undone, and so you can be learning obedience. Then,
when the body is strong, it will have formed a good habit to make duty
easier; and my Lucinda can be a sweet example, even while lying here, if
she chooses."

"Can I?" and Jill's eyes were full of softer tears as the comfortable,
cheering words sank into her heart, to blossom slowly by and by into her
life, for this was to be a long lesson, hard to learn, but very useful
in the years to come.

When the boys returned, after the Latin was recited and peace restored,
Jack showed her a recovered stamp promptly paid by Frank, who was as
just as he was severe, and Jill asked for the old red one, though
she did not tell why she wanted it, nor show it put away in the
spelling-book, a little seal upon a promise made to be kept.

Chapter VIII. Merry and Molly

Now let us see how the other missionaries got on with their tasks.

Farmer Grant was a thrifty, well-to-do man, anxious to give his children
greater advantages than he had enjoyed, and to improve the fine place
of which he was justly proud. Mrs. Grant was a notable housewife, as
ambitious and industrious as her husband, but too busy to spend any time
on the elegancies of life, though always ready to help the poor and sick
like a good neighbor and Christian woman. The three sons--Tom, Dick,
and Harry--were big fellows of seventeen, nineteen, and twenty-one;
the first two on the farm, and the elder in a store just setting up for
himself. Kind-hearted but rough-mannered youths, who loved Merry very
much, but teased her sadly about her "fine lady airs," as they called
her dainty ways and love of beauty.

Merry was a thoughtful girl, full of innocent fancies, refined tastes,
and romantic dreams, in which no one sympathized at home, though she was
the pet of the family. It did seem, to an outsider, as if the delicate
little creature had got there by mistake, for she looked very like a
tea-rose in a field of clover and dandelions, whose highest aim in life
was to feed cows and help make root beer.

When the girls talked over the new society, it pleased Merry very much,
and she decided not only to try and love work better, but to convert
her family to a liking for pretty things, as she called her own more
cultivated tastes.

"I will begin at once,