Let me tell you what particular day that letter found its way to the
parsonage: a rainy, dreary day in the early winter, when the ground
had not deliberately frozen over, and things generally settled down
to good solid winter weather, but in that muddy slushy, transition
state of weather when nothing anywhere seems settled save clouds, dun
and dreary, drooping low over a dreary earth; came when the minister
was struggling hard with a nervous headache and sleeplessness and
anxiety over a sick child; came when every nerve was drawn to its
highest tension, and the slightest touch might snap the main cord. It
didn't snap, however. He read that long, wise, carefully-written,
_sympathetic_ letter through twice, without the outward movement of a
muscle, only a flush of red rising to his forehead, and then
receding, leaving him very pale. Then he called his wife.

"Mattie, see here, have you time to read this? Wait! Have you nerve
for it? It will not help you. It is not good news nor encouraging
news, and it comes at a hard time; and yet I don't know. We can bear
any news, can't we, now that Johnnie is really better?"

With this introduction she read the letter, and the keen, clear gray
eye seemed to grow stronger as she read.

"Well," she said, "it is not such _very_ bad news; nothing, at least,
but what you ministers ought to be used to. We can go. There is work
in the world yet, I suppose."

"Work in the Lord's vineyard, Mattie, for _us_, if he wants us. If
not, why then there is rest."

Shall I tell you about that breaking up? about how the ties of love,