at her warm, living personality no longer filled it.

"Dear," she whispered, her eyes brimming over, "you were too unselfish
to let me see your loneliness when I wanted to go away to my Happy
Valley; now that you have gone to a happier one to be with papa, I
mustn't think of _my_ part of it, only of yours."

There was untold comfort in that thought. She clung to it all through
the hours that followed, through the simple service, and through Jack's
going away, and she brought it out to comfort Norman when the two were
left alone together.

"She's just away," she repeated, trying to console him with the belief
which was beginning to bring a peace that passed her understanding.
Every room in the house seemed to bear the imprint of the beloved
presence, just as they had done during those weeks when she waited every
day for her mother to come home from the Downs.

"We must think of her absence in that way," she repeated, "as if it is
only till nightfall. We can bear almost anything that long, if we take
it only one day at a time. It's when we get to piling up all the days
ahead of us and thinking of the years that we'll have to do without her
that it seems so unbearable. And you know, Norman, if she were here
she'd say by all means for you to go with Billy when he comes along with
the buggy. She'd want you to spend all this afternoon in the bright out
of doors instead of grieving here at home."

"But what about leaving you here alone?" asked Norman, with a new
consideration for her which touched her deeply.

"Oh, I shall be busy every minute of the time until you get back. I must
write to Joyce and Holland. They'll want to know every little thing. I
feel so sorry for them, so far away--"

"They'll never get done being thankful now, that they came home last
Christmas," said Norman in the pause that followed her unfinished
sentence.

"And I'll never get done being thankful that I didn't go away," rejoined
Mary. "There comes Billy now. You can hop out and show him what to do."

It had been arranged that Billy Downs should stay with them during the
few days of Jack's absence, to keep them company and to do Norman's
chores, which his disabled foot prevented him doing himself. Soon after
dinner the two boys started off in the old rattle-trap of a buggy to
drive along the shady mountain roads all afternoon in the sweet June
weather, and Mary went to her letter-writing. It was a hard task, and
she was thankful that she was