new associations, or taking
root in any other home. And indeed it is doubtful whether one ever
does take root again in the same sense as in the home of childhood,
which is linked with the earliest associations of opening thought, and
with all the hallowed ties that cluster around a child's happy home.
Other houses are but places of abode, made home by association: _that_
seemed absolutely and in itself _home_.

Alick had come to Ashleigh as soon as possible after his uncle's
death, and was anxious to take his mother at once to the new home he
had been preparing for her. As to Lucy, there seemed to be but one
course advisable. As Mr. Raymond could leave only a very slender
provision for his family, he had always been anxious that Lucy should
have an education sufficiently thorough to put her in a position to
gain her own livelihood by teaching, and a way seemed opened for her
to carry out his wishes in this respect. Mr. Brooke, urged thereto by
his daughter Stella, had written to Mrs. Steele, offering to receive
Lucy into his own family for the next two or three years, in order to
give her the advantage of a first-class education, which was, he
remarked, "the best he could do for her, as it would give her the
ability to do for herself."

Lucy shrank from the prospect of so long a residence in a home so
unlike the one she was leaving, as from Stella's remarks she felt sure
it must be. But to go with Harry to live with Mrs. Steele and Alick,
as they kindly invited her to do, in case she could not make up her
mind to go to Mr. Brooke's, would, she felt, be imposing far too great
a burden on Alick's kindness, though it seemed just the right home for
Harry. Fred, who had been summoned from college to his father's
deathbed, must return to resume his theological studies, for they all
insisted that he should not think of giving up the career which had
been his father's desire for him as well as his own. The more Lucy
thought about the matter, the more distinctly she saw that there was
no other way rightly open to her, especially as, even could she think
it right to accompany Mrs. Steele and Alick, she could not, in the new
village in the West, expect any educational advantages. But it was
with much reluctance, and after many prayers to be strengthened to
meet the new experiences before her, that she gave her decision to go
to live for the present in her Cousin Stella's home.

Fred, to whom she confided her extreme shrinking f