said, drawing her mother down
into the low chair beside the fire, and kneeling on the rug beside her.
"How good of you to come up to me! I was so longing for a talk."

"I think your father wanted Mr. Sefton to himself, so I left them
together."

"You must call him Richard," corrected Bessie; "he wants you to do so.
It was so nice to see him with you to-night; he will never want a mother
now. You like him, do you not?" rather shyly.

"Yes, indeed; we all like him; there is something so genuine about him.
My darling, I have not felt so happy since our poor Hatty's death."

"I think she would have been pleased about this, mother; it is the one
drop of bitterness in my cup of happiness that her congratulations are
missing. You were all so dear and kind to me, and to Richard, too; but I
missed my Hatty;" and Bessie leaned against her mother's shoulder, and
shed a few quiet tears.

"I think I must tell you something," returned her mother soothingly.
"Dear little Hatty used to talk in the strangest way sometimes. One
night when she had been very ill, and I was sitting beside her, she
told me that she had had such a funny dream about you--that you and Mr.
Sefton were going to be married, and that she had seen you dressed in
white, and looking so happy, and then she said very wistfully,
'Supposing my dream should come true, mother, and our Bessie really
married him, how nice that would be!' and she would speak of it more
than once, until I was obliged to remind her that I never cared to talk
of such subjects, and that I did not like my girls to talk of them,
either. 'But, all the same, mother, Bessie will not be an old maid,' she
persisted, with such a funny little smile, and then she left off to
please me."

"How strange!" replied Bessie thoughtfully. "I must tell Richard that;
he was so kind about Hatty. Mother, is it not nice to be able to tell
some one all one's thoughts, and be sure of their interest? That is how
I begin to feel about Richard. He is always so kind and patient, and
ready to hear everything, and he never laughs nor turn things into fun,
as Tom does; and he is so clever; he knows things of which I am quite
ignorant;" and Bessie rambled on in an innocent, girlish way of her
lover's perfections, while her mother listened with a smile, remembering
her own young days.

"She is very simple," she said to her husband that night; "she thinks
only of him; she does not seem to remember that he is rich, and that