and did the milking.
Mrs. Lansing took things into her own capable hands. John and his wife
were sent for and came, and Jim Lansing quietly hitched up a team and
went for Martha and her husband--poor Martha, who had not seen her
mother for more than a year!

All night Mr. Stillman watched by the bedside or walked up and down
the long back porch. It could not be she would die--his wife. It
was the hot weather; she was just weak and tired. That was it, Mr.
Stillman--worn out, tired; and rest was coming. When Martha came, the
mother who had so longed for her did not recognize her.

"Mother, only speak to me!" cried the daughter in anguish; but the
mother looked at her with dimming eyes that saw no more of earth,
and muttered as she turned upon her couch, "Hurry, girls, it's nearly
noon. Hurry! Father will be angry if he has to wait."

Then she grew quiet; only her restless hands, which her daughters
vainly strove to hold, kept reaching out as if to grasp that unknown
land she was so soon to enter; and before the sun was high in the
morning Mrs. Stillman had found rest.

Her husband was stunned. With haggard face he bent over his dead.
"If I had known," he said. "Oh, my wife, if I had known, I would have
taken better care of you."

Ah, Mr. Stillman, you are not the only one who with remorseful heart
cries, "If I had only known, if I had only known!"

Life went on as usual at Stillman's after the mother had left them.
For a while the father was kinder, but as time went on the old habit
was resumed. Elizabeth went mechanically about her work, and her
father did not notice her evidently failing health. Her quietness was
a relief to him; for Margaret was growing more defiant toward him, and
quarrelled constantly with Tom, who, now that his mother's influence
was withdrawn, became more and more meddlesome and overbearing in his
conduct toward his sisters. The summer following Mrs. Stillman's death
Mrs. Lansing's eldest son, Frank, took unto himself a wife; and
late in the fall the neighborhood was electrified by the unexpected
marriage of Mrs. Lansing and Mr. Stillman. Her boys, on learning her
intention, had remonstrated; but she said: "You boys do not need me,
and these girls do. Think of a young girl like Rachel saying, 'God had
nothing to do with my mother's death. It was hard work killed her!'
And when I tried to tell her of His goodness to His creatures, she
said: 'Yes; He is good enough to men. All He cares for wo