is the child of many prayers. How well I remember his mother! how
earnestly she prayed for the little boy! Have I faithfully filled her
place? If she had lived, would not her son have grown into a better
man, a better Christian?" Here Aunt Faith again broke down, and buried
her face in her hands. Hugh was her darling; and, although he was now
twenty years of age, and so tall and strong that he could easily carry
his aunt in his arms, to her he was still the curly-haired boy,
Fitzhugh Warrington, whom the dying mother gave to Aunt Faith for her
own. "There is Sibyl, also," she thought, as she glanced towards the
garden, where her niece sat reading under the arbor; "she is at the
other extreme, as unlike her brother as snow is unlike fire. Sibyl
never does wrong. I believe I have never had cause to punish her, even
in childhood. But she is so cold, so impassive; I can never get down
as far as her heart; I am never sure that she loves me." Aunt Faith
sighed heavily. Sibyl's coldness was harder for her to bear than
Hugh's waywardness.

Then her thoughts turned towards the younger children. "Grace is too
young to cause me much anxiety; but still I seem to have made no more
impression upon her religious nature than I could have done upon a
running brook; and as for Tom,--" Here Aunt Faith's musings were
rudely interrupted by a shout and a howl. Through the hall behind her
came a galloping procession. First, "Turk," the great Newfoundland
dog, harnessed to a rattling wagon, in which sat "Grip," the mongrel,
muffled in a shawl, his melancholy countenance encircled with a white
ruffled cap; then came Tom, as driver, and behind him "Pete" the
terrier, fastened by a long string, and dragging Miss Estella Camilla
Wales, in her little go-cart, very much against his will. "Miss
Estella Camilla Wales" was Grace's favorite doll, and no sooner did
she behold the danger of her pet, than she sprang from the