ife.
They had studied and pursued courses of reading together. They had
together organized and carried on works of benevolence and charity.

The brother and sister had been left joint heirs of a large
manufacturing property, employing hundreds of hands, in their
vicinity; and the care and cultivation of these work-people, the
education of their children, had been most conscientiously upon their
minds. Half of every Sunday they devoted together to labors in the
Sunday school of their manufacturing village; and the two worked so
harmoniously together in the interests of their life, that Grace had
never felt the want of any domestic ties or relations other than those
that she had.

Our readers may perhaps, therefore, concede that, among the many
claimants for their sympathy in this cross-grained world of ours, some
few grains of it may properly be due to Grace.

Things are trials that try us: afflictions are what afflict us; and,
under this showing, Grace was both tried and afflicted by the sudden
engagement of her brother. When the whole groundwork on which one's
daily life is built caves in, and falls into the cellar without one
moment's warning, it is not in human nature to pick one's self up, and
reconstruct and rearrange in a moment. So Grace thought, at any rate;
but she made a hurried effort to dash back her tears, and gulp down
a rising in her throat, anxious only not to be selfish, and not to
disgust her brother in the outset with any personal egotism.

So she ran to the front door to meet him, and fell into his arms,
trying so hard to seem congratulatory and affectionate that she broke
out into sobbing.

"My dear Gracie," said John, embracing and kissing her with that
gushing fervor with which newly engaged gentlemen are apt to deluge
every creature whom they meet, "you've got my letter. Well, were not
you astonished?"

"O John, it was so sudden!" was all poor Grace could say. "And you
know, John, since mother died, you and I have been all in all to each
other."

"And so we shall be, Gracie. Why, yes, of course we shall," he said,
stroking her hair, and playing with her trembling, thin, white hands.
"Why, this only makes me love you the more now; and you will love my
little Lillie: fact is, you can't help it. We shall both of us be
happier for having her here."

"Well, you know, John, I never saw her," said Grace, deprecatingly,
"and so you can't wonder."

"Oh, yes, of course! Don't wonder in the lea