box, and returned
with a Bible in her hand.

"I think, boys," she said, "we ought to end this first happy evening
in our new home by thanking God together for his blessings."

"I am sure we ought, mother," George said, and Bill's face expressed
his approval.

So Mrs. Andrews read a chapter, and then they knelt and thanked God
for his blessings, and the custom thus begun was continued henceforth
in No. 8 Laburnum Villas.

Hitherto George and his companion had found things much more pleasant
at the works than they had expected. They had, of course, had
principally to do with Bob Grimstone; still there were many other men
in the shop, and at times, when his bench was standing idle while some
slight alterations or adjustment of machinery were made, they were set
to work with others. Men are quick to see when boys are doing their
best, and, finding the lads intent upon their work and given neither
to idleness nor skylarking, they seldom had a sharp word addressed to
them. But after Mrs. Andrews had come home they found themselves
addressed in a warmer and more kindly manner by the men. Bob Grimstone
had told two or three of his mates of the sacrifices the boys had made
to save up money to make a home for the mother of one of them when she
came out of hospital. They were not less impressed than he had been,
and the story went the round of the workshops and even came to the
ears of the foreman, and there was not a man there but expressed
himself in warm terms of surprise and admiration that two lads should
for six months have stinted themselves of food in order to lay by half
their pay for such a purpose.

"There's precious few would have done such a thing," one of the older
workmen said, "not one in a thousand; why, not one chap in a hundred,
even when he's going to be married, will stint himself like that to
make a home for the gal he is going to make his wife, so as to start
housekeeping out of debt; and as to doing it for a mother, where will
you find 'em? In course a man ought to do as much for his mother as
for the gal who is agoing to be his wife, seeing how much he owes her;
but how many does it, that's what I says, how many does it?"

So after that the boys were surprised to find how many of the men,
when they met them at the gate, would give them a kindly nod or a
hearty, "Good-morning, young chaps!"

A day or two after Mrs. Andrews had settled in Laburnum Villas she
went up to town and called upon a number