e matters can mean but
little to you, my dear child; but the eyes of your mind are so quick, I
know it is one of your delights to fancy the colours and lights that you
cannot see. Some bright-coloured food, then,--fried fish, it might be,
which should be of a golden brown shade,--would be always on a dark blue
platter, while a dark dish, say beefsteak, would be on the creamy yellow
crockery that had belonged to my father's mother; and with it a wreath
of parsley or carrot, setting off the yellow still more. And always,
winter and summer, some flower, if only a single geranium-bloom, on the
table. So that our table was always like a festival. I think this
troubled my father, when his dark moods were on him. He thought it a
snare of the flesh. Sometimes, if the meal were specially dainty, he
would eat nothing but dry bread, and this grieved Mother Marie almost
more than anything else. I remember one day,--it was my birthday, and I
must have been quite a big boy by that time,--Mother Marie had made a
pretty rose-feast for me. The table was strewn with rose-leaves, and
there was a garland of roses round my plate, and they stood everywhere,
in cups and bowls. There was a round cake, too, with rose-coloured
frosting; I thought the angels might have such feasts on their
birthdays, but was sure no one else could.

But when my father came in,--I can see now his look of pain and terror.

"You are tempting the Lord, Mary!" he cried. "You are teaching our child
to love the lust of the flesh and the pride of the eye. It is sin, it is
sin, my wife!"

I trembled, for I feared he would throw my beautiful cake into the fire,
as I had once seen him throw a pretty salad. But my mother Marie took
his arm. The door stood open, and the warm June was shining through. She
led him to the doorway, and pointed to the sky.

"Look, _mon ami_!" she said, in her clear, soft voice. "See the day of
gold that the good God has made for our little Jacques! He fills the
garden wiz roses,--I bring His roses in ze house. It is that He love ze
roses, and ze little child, and thee and me, my poor Jacques; for He
make us all, is it not?"

And presently, with her soft hand on his arm, the pain went from my poor
father, and he came in and sat down with us, and even patted my head and
tasted the cake. I recall many such scenes as this, my dear child. And
perhaps I should say that my mind was, and has always remained, with my
mother on such matters. If God giv