llen came, vigorous, fresh, beautiful,
like the early morning. She liked to have her in the room, to watch her
face, to braid her long brown hair, and dress it with flowers, or
pearls, or strings of beads,--to clasp her hands about the pretty white
throat, as if she were only a pigeon, or a little lamb, brought in for
her to play with.

She was pleased, too, about David. "He is so good," she said to me one
day. "I always knew he had love and gentleness in his heart, and now an
angel has come to roll away the stone."

I thought a great deal of my privilege of going into her room, the same
as the rest. After the perplexing, and often low, grovelling duties of
my profession, it was like sitting at the gate of heaven.

I used to love to come home, at the close of a long summer's day, and
find the family assembled there. I felt the _rest_ of the hour so much
more, sitting among people who had been hard at work all day.

The windows would be set wide open, that not a breath of out-door air
might he lost. And with the air would seem to come in the deep peace,
the solemn Hush of a country-twilight. It pervaded the room; and even my
cold, worldly nature would be touched.

In these dim, shadowy hours, when Nature seemed to stand still,
breathless, waiting for the coming darkness, if I longed for anything,
it was for a voice to sing. Speech seemed harsh. Yet we often repeated
hymns and ballads. Emily knew a great many, and, after saying them over,
would dwell upon them, drawing the most beautiful meanings from passages
which to me had seemed obscure, and sometimes talked like one inspired.

I felt that these seasons were my salvation,--were saving me from my
worldliness. Still, I sometimes had a guilty feeling, as if I were
drawing from Emily her beautiful life,--as if I were getting something
to which I had no right, something too good for me,--as if she might
exclaim, at any moment, "Virtue is gone out from me!"

But Mary Ellen could sing. That was good. She knew hymns by dozens, and
tunes to them all, both old and new. Besides these, she could sing
love-songs and quaint old ballads, that nobody ever heard before.

After she came, we had music to our twilights.

David, of course, was a listener. He said he was always fond of music. I
used sometimes to wonder if the pretty singer of love-songs had any
special designs upon him. For I had been curiously watching this
innocent little country-girl.

In talking with a frien