as he can, be it long or short, and then it will never be a sad life or
a life thrown away."

"Helen, you're not clever, but you're a wise little woman, my dear," the
minister would say, patting the flaxen curls or the busy hands--large
and brown, yet with a certain grace about them, too--helpful hands,
made to hold children, or tend sick folk, or sustain the feeble steps of
old age. She was "no bonnie" Helen Cardross; it was just a round, rosy,
sonsie face, with no features in particular, but she was pleasant to
look upon, and inexpressibly pleasant to live with; for it was such a
wholesome nature, so entirely free from moods, or fancies, or crochets
of any kind--those sad vagaries of ill-health, ill-humor, and
ill-conditionedness of every sort, which are sometimes only a
misfortune, caused by an unhappy natural temperament, but oftener arise
from pure egotism, of which there was not an atom in Helen Cardross.
Her life was like the life of a flower--as natural, unconscious,
fresh, and sweet: she took in every influence about her, and gave out
freely all she had to give; desired no better things than she possessed,
and where she was planted there she grew.

It was not wonderful that the little earl loved her, and that under her
sunshiny soul his life too blossomed out as it might never otherwise
have done, but have drooped and faded, and gone back into the darkness,
imperfect and unfulfilled; for, though each human life is, in a sense,
complete to itself, and must work itself out independently, clinging to
no other, still there is a great and beautiful mystery in the way one
life seems to influence an other, sometimes for ill, but far, far
oftener for good.

Lord Cairnforth was not much with the Cardross boys. He liked them, and