body, making her know as she had not known before how very weary she had
been and how deep an ache her heart had held.

"Oh, it's good!" she cried again, stretching her hands at full length
above her head. "I wish I could stay for one whole day, just here in the
clover with the bees and the birds and the trees and the clouds and the
blue sky, no children, no dinner, no tidying up."

As she lay there it seemed to her as if she had thrown off for the
moment the load she had been carrying for many months. For a year
she had tried to fill in the minister's household her mother's place.
Without a day's warning the burden had been laid upon her shoulders,
but with the fine courage that youth and love combine to give, denying
herself even the poor luxury of indulgence of the grief that had fallen
upon her young heart, she had given herself, without thought of anything
heroic in her giving, to the caring for the house and the household, and
the comforting as best she could of her father, suddenly bereft of her
who had been to him not wife alone, but comrade and counsellor as well.
Without a thought, she had at once surrendered all the bright plans that
she, with her mother, had cherished for the cultivation of her varied
talents, and had turned to the dull, monotonous routine of household
duties with never a thought but that she must do it. There was no one
else.

"I believe I am tired," she said again aloud; then letting her heart
follow her eyes into and beyond the blue above her, she cried softly, "O
mother, how tired you must have been with it all, and how much you did
for me! For me, great, big lump that I am! Dear little mother. Oh, if
I had only known! Oh, we were all so thoughtless!" She stretched up
her hands again to the blue sky with its fleecy clouds. "For your sake,