so,--weak through
disinterestedness, faith, and the disposition to make the best of the
wife he had chosen.

And so Lillie came home; and there was festivity and rejoicing. Grace
found herself floated into matrimony on a tide bringing gifts and
tokens of remembrance from everybody that had ever known her; for all
were delighted with this opportunity of testifying a sense of her
worth, and every hand was ready to help ring her wedding bells.

CHAPTER XXVI.

_MOTHERHOOD_.

It is supposed by some that to become a mother is of itself a healing
and saving dispensation; that of course the reign of selfishness
ends, and the reign of better things begins, with the commencement of
maternity.

But old things do not pass away and all things become new by any such
rapid process of conversion. A whole life spent in self-seeking and
self-pleasing is no preparation for the most august and austere of
woman's sufferings and duties; and it is not to be wondered at if the
untrained, untaught, and self-indulgent shrink from this ordeal, as
Lillie did.

The next spring, while the gables of the new cottage on Elm Street
were looking picturesquely through the blossoming cherry-trees, and
the smoke was curling up from the chimneys where Grace and her husband
were cosily settled down together, there came to John's house another
little Lillie.

The little creature came in terror and trembling. For the mother had
trifled fearfully with the great laws of her being before its birth;
and the very shadow of death hung over her at the time the little new
life began.

Lillie's mother, now a widow, was sent for, and by this event
installed as a fixture in her daughter's dwelling; and for weeks
the sympathies of all the neighborhood were concentrated upon the
sufferer. Flowers and fruits were left daily at the door. Every one
was forward in offering those kindly attentions which spring up so
gracefully in rural neighborhoods. Everybody was interested for her.
She was little and pretty and suffering; and people even forgot to
blame her for the levities that had made her present trial more
severe. As to John, he watched over her day and night with anxious
assiduity, forgetting every fault and foible. She was now more than
the wife of his youth; she was the mother of his child, enthroned and
glorified in his eyes by the wonderful and mysterious experiences
which had given this new little treasure to their dwelling.

To say the truth, L