n on
Sunday, but he was so tame; and then my frock, and the horrid deficiency
in those little neatnesses."

"Perhaps that is good for you in one way; you might get very high-flying
if you had not the discipline of those little tiresome things,
correcting them will help you, and keep your high things from being all
romance. I know dear mamma used to say so; that the trying to conquer
them was a help to you. Oh, here's Mary! Mary, will you get Ethel's
dressing things? She has come home wet-footed and cold, and has been
warming herself by my fire."

Mary was happy to help, and Ethel was dressed and cheered by the time
Dr. May came in, for a hurried visit and report of his doings; Flora
followed on her way from her room. Then all went to tea, leaving
Margaret to have a visit from the little ones under charge of nurse. Two
hours' stay with her, that precious time when she knew that sad as the
talk often was, it was truly a comfort to him. It ended when ten o'clock
struck, and he went down--Margaret hearing the bell, the sounds of
the assembling servants, the shutting of the door, the stillness
of prayer-time, the opening again, the feet moving off in different
directions, then brothers and sisters coming in to kiss her and bid her
good-night, nurse and Flora arranging her for the night, Flora coming
to sleep in her little bed in the corner of the room, and, lastly, her
father's tender good-night, and melancholy look at her, and all was
quiet, except the low voices and movements as Richard attended him in
his own room.

Margaret could think: "Dear, dear Ethel, how noble and high she is! But
I am afraid! It is what people call a difficult, dangerous age, and the
grander she is, the greater danger of not managing her rightly. If those
high purposes should run only into romance like mine, or grow out into
eccentricities and unfemininesses, what a grievous pity it would be! And
I, so little older, so much less clever, with just sympathy enough not
to be a wise restraint--I am the person who has the responsibility, and
oh, what shall I do? Mamma trusted to me to be a mother to them, papa
looks to me, and I so unfit, besides this helplessness. But God sent it,
and put me in my place. He made me lie here, and will raise me up if it
is good, so I trust He will help me with my sisters."

"Grant me to have a right judgment in all things, and evermore to
rejoice in Thy holy comfort."

CHAPTER VII.

Something betwe