e
was a little flavor of merriment left. Aunt Isabel had no sympathy
with the hark-from-the-tombs-a-doleful-sound attitude. She thought it
was one's duty to be as cheery and hopeful as possible, and not to add
to the misery of the world at large by forcing it to witness one's
private grief. She and Nan had their hours of tender mourning and
sincere regret, but it was always Miss Severance's desire that no
unwholesome brooding should be indulged in by either of them.

So the girl tried to restrain the tears that would rise at the thought
of these saddened holidays, and endeavored to bring her mind to bear on
more happy subjects. She thought of her plans for the next day; she
made a mental recount of the gifts she had prepared, and then, somehow
against her will, her memory took her back to that morning when she had
heard of her father's death and listened to Miss Severance's story, and
she lived over again those intense moments when it almost seemed to her
her mother had been restored to her in this rare friend. The simple
history had a peculiar fascination for the girl, and she liked to think
that it was here, in these very rooms, that it all had been enacted.

She liked to look into those books of Miss Severance's that had her
mother's name upon the fly-leaf, and she liked to think that they were
given to "Bell with Florence's fond love."

Miss Severance had several photographs of her mother as a girl that Nan
had never seen, and she was fond of looking them over and exclaiming at
the "old-fashioned" frocks and quaintly arranged hair, and wondering
whether this happy-looking girl ever discovered the sacrifice her
friend had made for her.

One day Nan asked Miss Severance as much, but Aunt Isabel had shaken
her head gravely and said:

"No, Nan, she never did. And don't think of that part of the story, my
dear. It was no more than I ought to have done. You must not make a
piece of heroism of it. I only told it to you because unless I had, it
would have been difficult to explain why I left her and went so far
away."

"Aunt Isabel," Nan said, "won't you tell me just what it was you gave
up?" But Miss Severance shook her head.

What the girl could not at all comprehend was the fact of any one's
being "not at peace" with Aunt Isabel. Aunt Isabel, who never was
unjust nor unkind, nor anything but generous and good to every one.
She thought if she could have spoken to her father she could have
convinced him