ll; for
their father had written a letter to say that, if it could possibly be
managed, he should pass it with them. It need not be told what joyful
news this was to them all. It was not unmingled joy to them all,
however. Sophy had some anxieties, which she did her best to hide; but
they showed in the wistful watching of her mother's looks, and in her
gentle efforts to chase all clouds from her face. As for Mrs Morely,
she had suffered so many disappointments that she hardly dared to hope
now. And yet her hopes were stronger than her fears this time, and she
and her little daughter helped and encouraged one another without ever
speaking a word.

The father was to come in the night-train of Friday, and go away in the
night-train again, so that he might have two whole days at least at
home; and early as the sun rises on the twenty-fourth of May, the little
Morelys were up before him. The father came early, but not too early
for the expectant children. The little lads met him far down the hill.
They would have gone all the way to Littleton, only the bridge had been
carried away by the sudden rise of the river when the ice broke up, and
the mother would not trust so many of them to go over in the ferry-boat.
Sophy waited at the garden-gate, with the baby in her arms, and her
mother sat on the doorstep, pale and trembling, till the voices drew
near and they all came in sight.

"`Clothed, and in his right mind,'" she murmured, as her husband came
with Will on his shoulder and little Harry in his arms,--oh! so
different from him whose going away she had watched with such
misgivings! It was the husband of her youth come back to her again; and
she had much ado to keep back a great flood of joyful tears as she
welcomed him home. As for Sophy, she never thought of keeping back her
tears--she could not if she had tried ever so much--but clung sobbing to
her father's neck in a way that startled him not a little.

"What is it, Sophy? Are you not glad to see me?" he asked, after a
time, when she grew quiet.

"Oh, yes; she's glad," said Johnny. "That is her way of showing that
she's glad. Don't you mind, mother, how she cried that day when Mr
Grattan brought the things, just after father went away?"

"She cried then because she was hungry," said the matter-of-fact Eddy.

Sophy laughed, and kissed her father over and over again. Morely looked
at his wife. There was something to be told, but not now. That must
wait