you will take your tea, won't you, mother? and by-and-by one of the
girls shall come and sit with you."

"Are we to go down and leave her?" I observed, dubiously, as Allan
rose from his seat.

"Yes, go, both of you, I shall be better alone; Allan knows that,"
with a grateful glance as I reluctantly obeyed her. I was too young
to understand the healing effects of quiet and silence in a great
grief; to me the thought of such loneliness was dreadful, until,
later on, she explained the whole matter.

"I am never less alone than when I am alone," she said once, very
simply to me. "I have the remembrance of your dear father and his
words and looks ever before me, and God is so near--one feels that
most when one is solitary." And her words remained with me long
afterward.

It was not such a very sad evening, after all. The sea air had done
Dot good, and he was in better spirits; and then Carrie was so good
and sweet, and so pleased with everything.

"How kind of you, Esther," she said, with tears in her eyes, as I
led her into her little bedroom. "I hardly dared hope for this, and
so near dear mother." Well, it was very tiny, but very pretty, too.
Carrie had her own little bed, in which she had slept from a child,
and the evening sun streamed full on it, and a pleasant smell of
white jasmine pervaded it; part of the window was framed with the
delicate tendrils and tiny buds; and there was her little prayer-desk,
with its shelf of devotional books, and her little round table