had come a great and happy change; her eyes were now full of earnest
light, and she had forgotten her headaches and other small ills.

She now looked up into the banker's face.

"After all, life to be beautiful and to reach rightly towards eternity
should be helpful, and self-forgetful; do you not think so?" she said.
"I was long learning the two great commandments, which embody the whole
decalogue, and I probably never should have learned them if it had not
been for these blessed children, and their mother."

"H--m, h--m," said the banker.

On the porch were twenty children. In forty eyes the new light of
happiness was dawning. At the beginning, many of them had been hopeless
and even evil, but now it was all different, for they had found out that
they could laugh.

Aunty Stevens herself, full of laughter and bubbling over with joy at
seeing her friends again, surrounded by the shouting children, made them
more than welcome.

Bobby's grandfather was armed with a huge box, which he had
mysteriously guarded all day; he now set it down upon the porch.

"If you children don't make this box lighter at once, I shall have no
use for you," he declared. And they all, scenting candy with infallible
instinct, fell upon it with rapture.

They had tea on the lawn, that evening, and, after a consultation with