ntirely pacified, and talked about roast chicken, and
presently the little sisters were sitting up in their beds, each in her
wrapper, being fed by turns with delicately-buttered slices, Mary
standing between like a mother-bird feeding her young, and pleased to
find the eyes grow brighter and less hollow, the cheeks less wan, the
voices less thin and pipy, and a little laugh breaking out when she
mistook Minna for Ella.

While tidying the room, she was assailed with entreaties to call their
Mary, and let them get up, they were so tired of bed. She undertook to
be still their Mary, and made them direct her to the house-maid's
stores, went down on her knees at the embers, and so dealt with
matches, chips, and coal, that to her own surprise and pride a fire was
evoked.

'But,' said Ella, 'I thought you were a Miss May.'

'So I am, my dear.'

'But ladies don't light fires,' said Minna, in open-eyed perplexity.

'Oh,' exclaimed the younger sister, 'you know Henry said he did not
think any of the Miss Mays were first-rate, and that our Ave beat them
all to nothing.'

The elder, Minna, began hushing; and it must be confessed that honest
Mary was not superior to a certain crimson flush of indignation, as she
held her head into the grate, and thought of Ethel, Flora, and Blanche,
criticized by Mr. Henry Ward. Little ungrateful chit! No, it was not
a matter of laughing, but of forgiveness; and the assertion of the
dignity of usefulness was speedily forgotten in the toilette of the
small light skin-and-bone frames, in the course of which she received
sundry compliments--'her hands were so nice and soft,' 'she did not
pull their hair like their own Mary,' 'they wished she always dressed
them.'

The trying moment was when they asked if they might kneel at her lap
for their prayers. To Mary, the twelve years seemed as nothing since
her first prayers after the day of terror and bereavement, and her eyes
swam with tears as the younger girl unthinkingly rehearsed her wonted
formula, and the elder, clinging to her, whispered gravely, 'Please,
what shall I say?'

With full heart, and voice almost unmanageable, Mary prompted the few
simple words that had come to her in that hour of sorrow. She looked
up, from stooping to the child's ear, to see her father at the door,
gazing at them with face greatly moved. The children greeted him
fondly, and he sat down with one on each knee, and caressed them as he
looked them well over