alary, and still more to his surprise, found a
well cooked and well served meal awaiting him. Never, since his
marriage, had he eaten food at his own table with so true a
relish--never before had every thing in his house seemed so much
like home.

And so things went on for a week, Mr. Uhler wondering and observant,
and Mrs. Uhler finding her own sweet reward, not only in a
consciousness of duty, but in seeing a great change in her husband,
who was no longer moody and ill-natured, and who had not been absent
once at meal time, nor during an evening, since she had striven to
be to him a good wife, and to her children a self denying mother.

There came, now, to be a sort of tacit emulation of good offices
between the wife and husband, who had, for so many years, lived in a
state of partial indifference. Mr. Uhler urged the procuring of a
domestic, in place of the girl who had left them, but Mrs. Uhler
said no--their circumstances would not justify the expense. Mr.
Uhler said they could very well afford it, and intimated something
about an expected advance in his salary.

"I do not wish to see you a mere household drudge," he said to her
one day, a few weeks after the change just noted. "You know so well
how every thing ought to be done, that the office of director alone
should be yours. I think there is a brighter day coming for us. I
hope so. From the first of next month, my salary is to be increased
to a thousand dollars. Then we will move from this poor place, into
a better home."

There was a blending of hopefulness and tenderness in the voice of
Mr. Uhler, that touched his wife deeply. Overcome by her feelings,
she laid her face upon his bosom, and wept.

"Whether the day be brighter or darker," she said, when she could
speak calmly, "God helping me, I will be to you a true wife, Herman.
If there be clouds and storms without, the hearth shall only burn
the brighter for you within. Forgive me for the past, dear husband!
and have faith in me for the future. You shall not be disappointed."

And he was not. Mrs. Uhler had discovered her true relation, and had
become conscious of her true duties. She was no longer jealous of
her own rights, and therefore never trespassed on the rights of her
husband.

The rapidity with which Mr. Uhler rose to his old position in
business, sometimes caused a feeling of wonder to pervade the mind
of his wife. From a clerk of one thousand, he soon came into the
receipt of two thousa