the satisfaction of announcing to poor Antonio, the next time she
visited him, to his great relief and satisfaction, that Nelly's future
home, so long as she desired it, should be with Mrs. Brooke.

XVI.

_Darkness and Light._

"Tell me the old, old story,
If you would really be
In any time of trouble
A comforter to me."

Fred came to town for a few days in his Christmas vacation, just as
Stella was beginning to recover from the severe attack which had
prostrated her. Mr. Brooke's house being so full of sickness, Lucy,
though very unwilling to leave Amy, thought it best, on Fred's
account, to accept an urgent invitation from the Eastwoods that they
should both spend a week at Oakvale. He would thus have a pleasanter
vacation than under the circumstances he could have at his uncle's,
where he felt himself in the way, and where Lucy had so many demands
upon her time that she could see but little of a brother whose visits
were so rare. The change of scene was very much needed by her, for the
confinement and fatigue of her sick-room attendance had had a
depressing influence on her health and spirits.

It was certainly, in spite of all her anxiety about Amy, a very
enjoyable change to the bright, cheerful, Christian atmosphere of Dr.
Eastwood's house, and the bracing influence of the outdoor exercise in
which the others made her participate. She felt as if it were wrong to
enjoy it so much, when Amy, she knew, was dying, and Stella as yet in
so precarious a condition. But God sometimes gives, in very trying
circumstances, a buoyancy and cheerfulness of feeling quite
independent of the circumstances, which seem specially sent to
communicate a strength that will be greatly needed in approaching days
of trial,--a pleasant "land of Beulah," before the watchers stand
quite on the shore of "the dark river." And it can never be right
sullenly to close the heart in determined sadness against the cheering
influences of God's light, and air, and bright sunshine; nor can we
usually, if we would, act so foolishly and ungratefully. That happy
week at Oakvale often seemed to Lucy a sort of oasis of sunshine, as
compared with the depressing weeks that preceded and followed it.

Oakvale looked scarcely less beautiful now that the surrounding hills
wore their white mantle of snow, contrasting with the intense blue of
the winter sky and the dark green of the pines, while the little river
lay, a strip of g