died, Mary, ere it had come to this!"--and
the poor man hid his face in the bedclothes, and moaned like a stricken
child. The patient wife laid aside her work, and taking the well-worn
Bible from its sacred resting-place, read to him the thirty-seventh
Psalm--then rising and going to the window, she pressed her ear against
the pane, and listened for her Jennie's coming. Hark! a step is on the
stairs! The husband and wife both started--it was a heavy, lumbering
tread--not the soft foot-falls of their gentle little one, that brought
music even to their dismal abode:

"Some one is knocking, Mary," said the husband, and, as he spoke, the
door opened, and a man appeared with a note and a basket.

"Is Mrs. Grig here," asked the man.

"That is my name," replied the frightened woman whose maternal heart
immediately suggested that something had happened to her child.

"Tell me of my darling. Is she hurt? Is she dead?"--then seizing the
note which the servant held out to her she read as follows:

"Mr. and Mrs. Grig must not be alarmed about their little
Jennie. She has met with a slight accident; but her life is
not endangered, and she is where every attention will be
bestowed upon her. If they will spare her to me until she is
wholly restored, they will confer the greatest of favors upon
their friend,

"HELENA DUNMORE.

"I send a few delicacies, which I hope her sick father will relish.
Jennie wishes to see her mother before she sleeps, will she come to her
an hour this evening?"

The servant left the name of the street, and the number of the house
where his mistress lived, and departed, with an humble reverence, for
there was an innate aristocracy in Mrs. Grig that commanded the respect
of all who saw her, even though the vicissitudes of life had robbed her
of the external marks of rank and elegance. "God be praised!" said she,
as she pressed her lips to the pale brow of her now hopeful husband,
"Our house is not left unto us desolate, neither has our Father forsaken
us in our time of necessity. Surely He giveth bread to the hungry, and
filleth the fainting soul with gladness!" Then spreading the tempting
viands before the famished invalid, she smiled with the cheerfulness of
her earlier days, as she saw with what relish he ate and drank.

When they had finished their unexpected, but welcome meal, she placed
the fragments carefully away, and blowing out the light, w