er, Harry."

"The paper might get lost."

And John smiled and answered, "So it might."

So John went to the nursery and first of all to the boys' bed. Very
quietly they slipped their little hands into his and told him in
whispers, "Mamma is singing Agnes to sleep, and we must not make any
noise." So very quiet good-bye kisses full of sweet promises were given
and John turned towards Lucy. She sat in her low nursing-chair slowly
rocking to-and-fro the baby in her arms. Her face was bent and smiling
above it and she was singing sweet and singing low a strain from a
pretty lullaby,

"O rock the sweet carnation red,
And rock the silver lining,
And rock my baby softly, too,
With skein of silk entwining.
Come, O Sleep, from Chio's Isle!
And take my little one awhile!"

She had lost all her anxious expression. She was rosy and smiling, and
looked as if she liked the nursery rhyme as well as Agnes did and that
Agnes liked it was shown by the little starts with which she roused
herself if she felt the song slipping away from her.

"Let me kiss the little one," said John, "and then I must bid you
good-bye. We shall soon meet again, Lucy, and I am glad to leave you
looking so much better."

Lucy not only looked much better, she was exceedingly beautiful. For her
nature reached down to the perennial, and she had kept a child's
capacity to be happy in small, everyday pleasures. It was always such an
easy thing to please her and so difficult for little frets to annoy her.
Harry's inconsequent, thoughtless ways would have worried and tried some
women to the uttermost, for he was frequently less thoughtful and less
helpful than he should have been. But Lucy was slow to notice or to
believe any wrong of her husband and even if it was made evident to her
she was ready to forgive it, ready to throw over his little tempers, his
hasty rudenesses, and his never-absent selfishness, the cloak of her
merciful manifest love.

"What a loving little woman she is!" thought John, but really what
affected him most was her constant cheerfulness. No fear could make her
doubt and she welcomed the first gleam of hope with smiles that filled
the house with the sunshine of her sure and fortunate expectations. How
did she do it? Then there flashed across John's mind the words of the
prophet Isaiah, "Thou meetest him _that rejoiceth_, and worketh
righteousness." God does not go to meet the complaining and the doubting
and