o grateful that I can't talk about it."

A month later Mrs. Cavers and Libby Anne arrived safely home, and
Libby Anne's enraptured eyes beheld the tall maple trees, the bed of
red and yellow tulips, and the budding horse-chestnuts of her dreams.
The grandmother, a gentle, white-haired old lady, looked anxiously
and often at her widowed daughter's face, so worn and tired, so
cruelly marked by the twelve hard years; and although Mrs. Cavers
told them but little of her past life that was gloomy and sad, yet
the mother's keen eyes of love read the story in her daughter's
work-worn hands, her gray hair, and the furrows that care and
sorrow had left in her face. She followed her about with tenderest
solicitude, always planning for her comfort and pleasure. She often
sat beside Mrs. Cavers when, in the quiet afternoon, she lay in the
hammock on the veranda. Always as they talked the mother was thinking
of the evil days that the world had held for her poor girl, and
planning in every way her loving heart could devise to make it up to
her, after the fashion of mothers the wide world over.

To Mrs. Cavers, the spring and summer days were full of peace
and happiness. The quiet restfulness of her mother's home--the
well-appointed rooms, the old-fashioned piano, with its yellow keys,
in the back parlour, the dear familiar pictures on the walls--all
these seemed to soothe her tired heart. The garden, with its patch
of ribbongrass, its sumach trees and scarlet runners, was full of
pleasant associations, and when she sat in the little vine-covered
summer-house and listened to the birds nesting in the trees above,
the long twelve years she had lived seemed like a bad dream, hazy and
unreal--the real things were the birds and the vines, and her
mother's love.

July came in warm and sultry, but behind the morning-glory vines that
closed in the small veranda it was always cool and pleasant. One day
Mrs. Cavers, lying in the hammock, was looking at the sweet face of
her mother, who sat knitting beside her. All afternoon, as she lay
there, she had been thinking of the hot, busy days on the farm which
she must soon face--the busy, busy farm, where the work has to be
done, for the men must be fed. Each day she seemed to dread it
more--the early rising, the long, long hours, the constant hurry and
rush, the interminable washing of heavy, white dishes in a hot little
kitchen, reeking with tobacco smoke. She had gone through it many
times, ch