aw.
--Whittier.

On the same Saturday morning that Herbert Greyson hurried away from his
friend's cottage, to travel post to Hurricane Hall, for the sole purpose
of accelerating the coming of her good fortune, Marah Rocke walked about
the house with a step so light, with eyes so bright and cheeks so
blooming, that one might have thought that years had rolled backward in
their course and made her a young girl again.

Traverse gazed upon her in delight. Reversing the words of the text, he
said:

"We must call you no longer Marah (which is bitter), but we must call
you Naomi (which is beautiful), mother!"

"Young flatterer!" she answered, smiling and slightly flushing. "But
tell me truly, Traverse, am I very much faded? Have care and toil and
grief made me look old?"

"You old?" exclaimed the boy, running his eyes over her beaming face and
graceful form with a look of non-comprehension that might have satisfied
her, but did not, for she immediately repeated:

"Yes; do I look old? Indeed I do not ask from vanity, child? Ah, it
little becomes me to be vain; but I do wish to look well in some one's
eyes."

"I wish there was a looking-glass in the house, mother, that it might
tell you; you should be called Naomi instead of Marah."

"Ah! that is just what he used to say to me in the old, happy time--the
time in Paradise, before the serpent entered!"

"What 'he,' mother?"

"Your father, boy, of course."

That was the first time she had ever mentioned his father to her son,
and now she spoke of him with such a flush of joy and hope that even
while her words referred darkly to the past, her eyes looked brightly to
the future. All this, taken with the events of the preceding evening,
greatly bewildered the mind of Traverse and agitated him with the
wildest conjectures.

"Mother, will you tell me about my father, and also what it is beyond
this promised kindness of Major Warfield that has made you so happy?" he
asked.

"Not now, my boy; dear boy, not now. I must not--I cannot--I dare not
yet! Wait a few days and you shall know all. Oh, it is hard to keep a
secret from my boy! but then it is not only my secret, but another's!
You do not think hard of me for withholding it now, do you, Traverse?"
she asked, affectionately.

"No, dear mother, of course I don't. I know you must be right, and I am
glad to see you happy."

"Happy! Oh, boy, you don't know how happy I am! I did n