he way people generally do. Your mother was a
good little thing, provokingly good sometimes; pretty too, and heiress,
they said, to an immense fortune. Is she rich still? or did she lose it
all by the war?"

"She did not lose it all, I know," said Elsie, "but how rich she is I do
not know; mamma and papa seldom talk of any but the true riches."

"Just like her, for all the world!" muttered the woman. Then aloud and
sneeringly, "Pray what do you mean by the true riches?"

"Those which can never be taken from us; treasure laid up in heaven where
neither moth nor rust doth corrupt and thieves break not through to
steal."

The sweet child voice ceased and silence reigned in the room for a moment,
while the splashing of the rain upon the roof could be distinctly heard.

Mrs. Gibson was the first to speak again. "Well I'd like to have that
kind, but I'd like wonderfully well to try the other a while first."

Elsie looked at the thin, sallow face with its hollow cheeks and sunken
eyes, and wished mamma were there to talk of Jesus to this poor woman, who
surely had but little time to prepare for another world.

"Is your mother at the Crags?" asked Mrs. Gibson turning to her again.

Elsie answered in the affirmative, adding that they had been there for
some time and would probably remain a week or two longer.

"Do you think she would be willing to come here to see me?" was the next
question, almost eagerly put.

"Mamma is very kind and I am sure she will come if you wish to see her,"
answered the child.

"Then tell her I do; tell her I, her old governess, am sick and poor and
in great trouble."

Tears rolled down her cheeks and for a moment her eyes rested upon her
daughter's face with an expression of keen anguish. "She's going blind,"
she whispered in Elsie's ear, drawing the child toward her, and nodding in
the direction of Sally, stitching away at the window.

"Blind! oh how dreadful!" exclaimed the little girl in low moved tones,
the tears springing to her eyes. "I wish she could go to Doctor Thomson."

"Doctor Thomson! who is he?"

"An oculist: he lives in Philadelphia. A friend of mamma's had something
growing over her eyes so that she was nearly blind, and he cut it off and
she can see now as well as anybody."

"I don't think that is the trouble with Sally's; though of course I can't
tell. But she's always had poor sight, and now that she has to support the
family with her needle, her eyes are nearly wo