never to be
out among them again?

One day Cynthia came up with two roses in a glass, most exquisite ones
at that.

"Cousin Elizabeth," she began, "do you remember the little rosebush you
put in my garden last summer? We thought it would die. It came out
beautifully in the spring and these are the first roses that bloomed. I
thought you ought to have them. Are you never going to get well enough
to walk around the garden? Cousin Eunice has kept it so nice."

Elizabeth Leverett's heart was touched and she swallowed over a lump in
her throat. She had taken up the rose from a place where it had been
smothered with those of larger growth and given it to the child who had
begged for "a garden of her very own." She had not supposed it would
live. And that Cynthia should bring her the firstfruits!

"I'm obliged to you," she returned huskily. "They are very beautiful."
And she wondered the child had not given them to Chilian.

"I wish you liked a few flowers every day," the little girl said
wistfully.

"Well--I might;" reluctantly.

"They are so lovely. The world is so beautiful. It's very hard to be ill
in summer, in winter one wouldn't mind it so much. But I am glad you can
sit up."

Was it tears that Elizabeth winked away?

She had many serious thoughts through these months of helplessness. She
had always measured everything by the strict line of duty, of
usefulness. There was a virtue in enduring hardness as a good soldier,
and the harder it was the more virtue it held in it. Her room was plain,
almost to bareness. There had been a faded patchwork top quilt at first,
until Mother Taft insisted upon having something nicer. But it had to be
folded up carefully at sundown, when the likelihood of calls was over.
And she did put one of the new rugs on the floor.

"That's beginning to go," Mrs. Taft said. "Some one will catch their
foot in it and have a bad fall."

"It could be mended, I suppose."

"Yes. There's a new one needed in the kitchen. I'll sew it up for that.
Land sakes! you've got enough in this house to last ten lifetimes!"

Friends came in to sit with her and brought their work. Sometimes she
sewed a little, but drawing out her needle hurt her back after a while.
She read her Bible and Baxter's "Saints' Rest" And she wondered a little
what the other world would be like. She had never thought of heaven with
joy--there was the judgment first. And now that she could begin to sit
up it did prefigure reco