y apologized of her own accord afterward--generally owned
herself the offender.

"Somehow you make things look different, mother," she would say, "I
can't think why they all seem topsy-turvy to me."

"When you are older I will lend you my spectacles," her mother returned,
smiling. "Now run and kiss Ella, and pray don't forget next time that
she is two years older; it can't possibly be a younger sister's duty to
contradict her on every occasion."

It was in this way that Mrs. Lambert had influenced her children, and
she had reaped a rich harvest for her painstaking, patient labors with
them, in the freely bestowed love and confidence with which her grown-up
daughters regarded her. Now, as she sat apart, the sound of their fresh
young voices was the sweetest music to her; not for worlds would she
have allowed her own inward sadness to damp their spirits, but more than
once the pen rested in her hand, and her attention wandered.

Outside the wintry sun was streaming on the leafless trees and snowy
lawns; some thrushes and sparrows were bathing in the pan of water that
Katie had placed there that morning.

"Let us go for a long walk this afternoon," Christine was saying,
"through the Coombe Woods, and round by Summerford, and down by the
quarry."

"Even Bessie forgets that it will be Frank's birthday to-morrow,"
thought Mrs. Lambert. "My darling boy, I wonder if he remembers it
there; if the angels tell him that his mother is thinking of him. That
is just what one longs to know--if they remember;" and then she sighed,
and pushed her papers aside, and no one saw the sadness of her face as
she went out. Meanwhile Bessie was relating how she had spent the last
three weeks.

"I can't think how you could endure it," observed Christine, as soon as
she had finished. "Aunt Charlotte is very nice, of course; she is
father's sister, and we ought to think so; but she leads such a dull
life, and then Cronyhurst is such an ugly village."

"It is not dull to her, but then you see it is her life. People look on
their own lives with such different eyes. Yes, it was very quiet at
Cronyhurst; the roads were too bad for walking, and we had a great deal
of snow; but we worked and talked, and sometimes I read aloud, and so
the days were not so long after all."

"I should have come home at the end of a week," returned Christine;
"three weeks at Cronyhurst in the winter is too dreadful. It was real
self-sacrifice on your part, Bessie;