alone, for time and again in telling of
that last happy day together she pushed the paper aside to lay her head
on the table and sob out, not only her own grief, but her sympathy for
Holland and Joyce so far away among strangers at this heart-breaking
time. She had one thing to console her which they had not, and which she
treasured as her dearest memory: her mother's softly spoken
commendation, "You've always been a comfort. I've _leaned_ on you so."

By the time the boys came back she had regained her usual composure, for
she spent the rest of the afternoon in the garden, weeding borders and
doing some necessary transplanting, and finding "the soft mute comfort
of green things growing," which gardens always hold. Next day in folding
away some of her mother's things she came across a yellowed envelope
which contained something of more permanent consolation than even her
garden had given. It was a copy of Kemble's beautiful poem, _Absence_,
traced in her mother's fine clear handwriting. The ink was faded and the
margin bore the date of her father's death. Several of the lines were
underscored, and Mary, reading these in the light of her own experience,
suddenly found the key to the great courage and serenity of soul with
which her mother had faced the desolation of her early widowhood.

"_What shall I do with all the days and hours
That must be counted ere I see thy face?_

. . . . . .

"_I'll tell thee; for thy sake I will lay hold
Of all good aims, and consecrate to thee
In worthy deeds, each moment that is told
While thou, beloved one! art far from me._

. . . . . .

"_I will this dreary blank of absence make
A noble task time . . ._

. . . . . .

"_So may my love and longing hallowed be,
And thy dear thought an influence divine._"

Up till this moment there had been one element in Mary's grief which she
had not recognized plainly enough to name. That was a sort of pity for
the incompleteness of her mother's life; the bareness of it. The
work-worn hands folded in their last rest seemed infinitely pathetic to
her, and some of her hardest crying spells had been when she thought
how little they had grasped of the good things of life, and how they had
been taken away before she had a chance to fill them hers