the family."

"It might disturb my mother. What sleep she gets is in the morning.
I never go to her till eleven o'clock, unless I am going out for the
day."

"And what will she want me to do for her?" asked Cecil, glancing at
her empty shelves.

"A woman's tact will soon find out. All I wish is that she should
be your first object."

It was a much larger _all_ than could be realized by the son whose
happiest moments had been spent in devotion to her, and who thought
the motherless girl must rejoice doubly in such a mother.

"But I am free till eleven," said Cecil.

"Free always, I hope," he returned, with a shade of vexation.
Therewith they descended the broad stairs into the panelled hall,
where a great fire was blazing on the hearth, and Rosamond and the
two young brothers were standing chatting merrily before it.

Julius, she said, had his primary sermon heavy on his mind, and had
risen before day to attack it; and she sped away to summon him from
Mrs. Poynsett's beautiful old dressing-room, where he sat writing
amid all the old associations. Anne was discovered hanging over the
dining-room fire, looking whiter and more exhausted than the night
before, having indeed been the first to come down-stairs. She was
rebuked for fatiguing herself, and again murmured something about