is to dilute your grief."

He made her promise: "Next time I come tell me all about you and
George. 'Give sorrow words, the grief that does not speak whispers the
o'erfraught heart and bids it break.'"

"Oh! that is a true word," sobbed Susan, "that is very true. Why a
little of the lead seems to have dropped off my heart now I have
spoken to you, sir."

All the next week Susan bore up as bravely as she could, and did what
Mr. Eden had bade her, and profited by his example. She learned to
draw from others the full history of their woes; and she found that
many a grief bitter as her own had passed over the dwellers in those
small cottages; it did her some little good to discover kindred woes,
and much good to go out of herself a while and pity them.

This drooping flower recovered her head a little, but still the
sweetest hour in all the working days of the week was that which
brought John Meadows to talk to her of Australia.



CHAPTER VIII.

SUSAN MERTON had two unfavored lovers; it is well to observe how
differently these two behaved. William Fielding stayed at home, threw
his whole soul into his farm, and seldom went near the woman he loved
but had no right to love. Meadows dangled about the flame; ashamed and
afraid to own his love, he fed it to a prodigious height by