't been feeling
very well lately, and I'm afraid I ought to have stayed at home to-day.
It was too warm in the church; and I got to looking at the clothes the
people had on, and nearly everything new was cut out by my chart, and it
seemed so funny, and I felt all at once as if I wanted to cry or laugh,
I didn't know which, but I'm better now."

John was listening with keen attention. Nearly all the new clothes in
the church made by Mary's chart, and she so tired and nervous that she
could not stay inside the church! His face grew grave and stern, but
when he spoke, his voice had its usual gentleness.

"You come along with me, Mary," he said, "We'll have our Sunday meetin'
out of doors, after all."

He lifted the cushions and robes from the rockaway and started towards
the woods at the back of the church, Mary following with the docility
of utter weariness. It was wrong, of course, to miss the May Meeting
sermon, but how could she worship God with that striped shirt waist in
front of her? Her temples throbbed, and there was a queer feeling at the
back of her head.

John laid the cushions on the ground and folded the robes into a pillow.

"Now, Mary, lay right down here," he commanded. "Sunday's a day of rest,
and you've got to rest. Don't you worry about the children. If they get
tired listenin' to the sermon, they've got sense enough to get up and
come out here; and nobody's goin' to know whether you and me are in
church or not. They're too much taken up with the baptizin' and the
bride."

And with these assurances Mary closed her eyes, and surrendered herself
to the sweet influence of the day and hour. The sunshine lay warm on her
shoulders and hands, the breath of May fanned her aching head, and John,
like a strong angel, was watching beside her. She heard the twitter of
birds in the top branches of the giant oaks, the voices of the choir
came to her softened by the distance, and her brain took up the rhythm
of the hymn they were singing:

"This is the day the Lord hath made,
He calls the hours his own;
Let heaven rejoice, let earth be glad,
And praise surround the throne."

But before the last stanza had been sung, the tension of brain and body
relaxed. John saw that she slept and thanked God. He looked at her
sleeping face, and the anxiety in his own deepened. For five years he
had borne the cross of a peevish, invalid wife, and then he had known
the bliss of living with a perfectly sou