"I am so glad. She seems
so happy."

The husbands are all present in the evening, and the old house is full
of light and gayety. Rachel slips upstairs to put baby to bed; and as
she sits in the room where so many miserable hours of her childhood
were spent, her tears fall, thinking of herself and the dear, patient
mother, who had suffered and died; and the old bitterness rises in her
heart. Baby stirs and she hushes him, then lays him gently in the old
cradle, and goes downstairs. Some impulse prompts her to enter the
sitting-room instead of the parlor, where she thinks the family are
all gathered.

As she opens the door she sees her father sitting, as of old, by the
table on which the lamp is burning, and she half turns to go out;
but something in his attitude touches her. He is not reading, for the
newspaper lies untouched--he is looking at something in his hand.

She notices how gray his hair is, and how age is tracing lines on his
face. "Are you feeling sick, father?" she asks.

"Oh, no," he says. "Look here, Rachel;" and he hands her a faded
daguerreotype of her mother taken when she was a fair young bride. "I
was thinking about her."

"How much like Susy," she said, with tears falling on the lovely face.

"Yes, only she was prettier," he answers. "I have been thinking of her
so much lately, Rachel. I am going to do something that would please
her. I have bought that pretty little place of Perry's, and I will put
Martha and her husband on it. Dick's a good industrious fellow; but
it's hard to make anything on a rented farm, and Martha's worried too
much. You don't think any of the children will object?" and he looked
anxiously in her face.

"Object? Why, they will be glad, father!" And dropping her head on his
shoulder, she puts her arm around him for the first time in her life;
and as she slips the little daguerreotype in his hand a sweet peace
fills her heart and she thinks: "The bitterness is gone, and love
fills its place." After awhile she joins the group in the parlor. They
are singing to Susy's accompaniment on the organ.

"Sing 'Coronation,' Susy," she says, as she sits down beside her
husband and glances lovingly in his face.

"What is it?" he whispers. "You are unusually happy."

"Yes," she answers. "I have had a vision of the land of Beulah, where
Love is king."

[Illustration]

CHAPTERS FROM A LIFE.

BY ELIZABETH STUART PHELPS,

AUTHOR OF "THE GATES AJAR," "A SINGULAR LIFE," ETC