hen the children were
so ill. Oh, if we could only be together always, as Lester and Elsie,
Edward and Zoe, are!"

"My love, my life," he said in low tones, tremulous with feeling, "what
if I should tell you that your wish is already accomplished?"

She gave him a glance of astonishment and incredulity.

"It is even so: I mean all I have said," he answered to the look. "I
have sent in my resignation: it has been accepted, and I have come
home--no, I have come _here_ to _make_ a home for you and my children,
hoping to live in it with you and them for the rest of my days."

Her face had grown radiant. "Oh! can it be true?" she cried, half under
her breath; for even in her glad surprise, the thought of her suffering
babe and its critical condition was present with her: "are we not to be
forced apart again in a few days or weeks? not to go on spending more
than half our lives at a distance from each other?"

"It is quite true, my darling," he answered, then went on to tell, in a
few brief sentences, how it had come about.

"It cost me a struggle to give up the service," he said in conclusion;
"and perhaps I might not have decided as I did, but for the thought
that, if I should be needed by my country at some future day, I could
offer her my services; and the thought that, at present, wife and
children needed me more, probably, than she. I felt that Lulu, in
particular, needed my oversight and training; that the task of bringing
her up was too difficult, too trying, to be left to other hands than
those of her father; and I feel that still more sensibly since hearing
of this day's doings," he added in a tone of heartfelt sorrow.

"I think you are right," Violet said. "She is more willing to submit to
your authority than to that of anybody else; as, indeed, she ought to
be: and in a home that she will feel is really her own, her father's
house, and with him constantly at hand, to watch over, and help her to
correct her faults, there is hope, I think, that she may grow to be all
you desire."

"Thank you, love, for saying it," he responded with emotion. "I could
not blame you if now you thought her utterly irreclaimable."

"No, oh, no!" she answered earnestly. "I have great hopes of her, with
her father at hand to help her in the struggle with her temper; for I am
sure she does struggle against it; and I must acknowledge, that, for
months past, she has been as good and lovable a child as one could
desire. I don't know