The uncles, themselves grieving over the departure of their dear young niece, were most kind to the bereaved brother and sisters; doing all they could to comfort them, attending to the arrangements and expenses connected with the funeral and the putting on of mourning by Ethel and Blanche.

Nor did they stop at that, but perceiving that the sisters were worn out with the long nursing, and needed rest and change of scene, counselled them to go away for a time, offering to bear for them all the expense involved in so doing.

A very kind and sympathetic letter had been received from Mrs. Keith only the day before, urging them to come to her for a few weeks, and now they decided to accept the invitation, closing their store and letting their maid-of-all-work take a holiday also.

Harry went with them for a few hours’ stay, then returned to his business, taking up his abode, for the time of their absence, in his old home at the house of their Uncle George.

It was at first something of a disappointment to Ethel and Blanche to find that Mrs. Keith had other guests than themselves—her husband’s sister Mildred and her two daughters Marcia and Fanny—but a few hours in their pleasant society more than reconciled them to this unexpected addition to the little party; both mother and daughters proving very kind, congenial, and sympathetic; listening with evident interest to the loving remembrances of Nannette indulged in by the sisters and Mrs. Keith and her Mary.

The girls grew very intimate, and Marcia and Fan talked a great deal about their brothers Percy and Stewart and their cousin Stuart Ormsby, sometimes reading aloud portions of letters received from them. They talked of their home too, expressing a hope that some day Ethel and Blanche might visit them there, of their father, grandparents, and other relatives, in a way that showed them to be warm-hearted, affectionate, happy girls.

Industrious ones also they evidently were, very apt to have a bit of work of one kind or another on hand as they talked. Marcia had a decided and well cultivated talent for drawing, and when out driving or walking would often be taking a sketch from nature; at other times drawing designs for engravers or patterns for manufacturers of dress goods, wall papers, or carpets. Fan too employed much of her time in the same way, though her taste and talent seemed hardly so strong in those directions as were her sister’s, and she proved a help to her aunt and cousins in remodelling dresses and bonnets and fashioning new ones. Blanche had her sewing also, and Ethel some of the fine needlework taught her years before by Mrs. Coote. They could not forget their recent bereavement, and often when alone together their tears would fall as they thought or talked of Nannette, rejoicing for her that she had safely reached the better land, but mourning for themselves that they would see her dear face no more upon earth.

Thus two weeks had passed and they were thinking of going home, when one evening two young men walked in who proved to be Percy Landreth and his cousin Stuart Ormsby. Their coming was a surprise to all, but they received a joyful welcome. “I am very glad to see you, boys,” their aunt said when greetings had been exchanged all round; “that is if you haven’t come with the intention of taking sister Mildred and her daughters away from us.”

“I must confess that that was our design in part, Aunt Flora,” returned Percy, “and if you can’t do without mother and my sisters we will gladly carry you back with us; indeed be rejoiced to do so whether you feel prepared to spare them or not.”

“That is right, Percy,” said his mother. “I should like nothing better than to carry the whole family—from your uncle Don down to the baby back with me and keep them there for a long visit. What do you say to it, brother?”

“Thank you kindly, Milly,” Mr. Keith returned. “I should like dearly well to accept your invitation, but cannot leave my business just at present, yet am willing to spare wife and children to you for a time, if mother Weston will come and keep house for me while they are gone.”

“She is not here now?” Percy said half enquiringly, and glancing about as if in search of her.

“No; she has been with one of her other daughters for some weeks past,” replied his uncle.

“Well,” said Mrs. Keith, “let us just give ourselves up to the enjoyment of each other’s society for to-night and settle all these questions to-morrow or later. Now, lads, tell us all about the dear ones left behind you.”

“Especially my dear old father and mother,” added her husband.

“We left them and all the others quite well,” replied Stuart Ormsby, “and were sent off with many injunctions to bring Aunt Mildred and the girls back with us; also as many of you as we could prevail upon to come.”

With that the conversation became general, though Ethel and Blanche did little more than listen. Ethel was thinking with some concern that the house would surely be very full now, and wishing she had not delayed her return home. After a little she stole from the room, thinking she would at once make some preparation for departure early the next day; but Mrs. Keith had divined her thoughts, and followed her to her room.

“Ethel, dear,” she said, putting an arm round the young girl’s waist, “yours is such a tell-tale face that I know what you have been thinking of since the arrival of our nephews. But you need not be troubled; there is plenty of room for them and you and your sister also. There is a room in the third story, which can be made very comfortable for the lads—especially compared with their quarters when in camp during the late war—and I want you and Blanche to get well acquainted with them and know what bright, good, promising young fellows they are.”

“Dear Mrs. Keith, you are and always have been so very kind to us, though we never had the slightest claim upon you,” returned Ethel, grateful tears shining in her eyes; “but our visit here has already been longer than we expected to make it when we came. Besides I know so large a family must cost a great deal in both work and money.”

“Never you mind about all that,” laughed Mrs. Keith; “we don’t need to count the pennies, and must always expect to pay in more ways than one for the pleasures we have.”

“Oh, please believe that I—I did not mean to be impertinent,” stammered Ethel with a blush; “but I’ve had to count pennies almost ever since I can remember, and it has made me feel very reluctant to use up those of other people.”

“My dear girl,” said Mrs. Keith with a smile, “I’ll forgive the impertinence if you will promise to stay another week or two.”

It did not take much persuasion to win Ethel’s consent, for she dreaded going back to the home where Nannette was not, and that seemed so desolate without her sunny presence.

The ten days or more that followed seemed to the young people to fly very fast in each other’s pleasant society, and by the end of that time their acquaintance had progressed beyond what it might in years of more ordinary intercourse. Percy and Ethel, Stuart and Blanche, felt that they knew each other well, had become mutually attached, and there was a double betrothal and a looking forward to a double wedding when a year or so should establish the young men more fully in business, increasing their means, and bring to the girls a feeling that the mourning garments, now worn in memory of Nannette, might be willingly and with propriety laid aside.

The relatives of the young men, including Percy’s mother and sisters, were all pleased, for having for years heard a great deal of these young girls, through their New Jersey relatives, they felt that they already knew them well.

“Dear girl, I want you to feel that you are no longer motherless,” Mildred said, taking Ethel into a close, loving embrace when Percy had told his story, in the privacy of her own room, “for I shall be glad to claim you as one of my daughters, as I am sure Percy’s father will also; so that you must no longer feel yourself an orphan.”

“Thank you, dear Mrs. Landreth. It will be, oh, so sweet, to have a mother again,” returned Ethel in low, tremulous tones, “though I do not feel worthy of such an one as you.”

“Quite as worthy as I am of such a daughter as yourself, dear girl,” Mildred said with a smile and another caress; “one who has shown herself such a brave, capable, energetic little woman, preferring to earn her own living rather than to live idly dependent upon others.”

“It is very, very kind in you to say that, dear Mrs. Landreth,” returned Ethel with a blush and a smile. “I know there are many who would despise me for having worked with my own hands for my daily bread, as do even some of my own dear kindred.”

“Well, dear girl, I should not let that trouble me, since God’s command is ‘Six days shalt thou labor and do all thy work,’ and Paul bids us ‘Work with your own hands,’ and again, ‘This we command you, that if any would not work, neither should he eat.’ The Bible—and the Bible only—is our God-given rule of faith and practice.”

“Yes, I have tried to make it mine,” Ethel said, “and not to care for the cold and scornful looks of those who despise others who labor with their hands. I must go back to my work to-morrow,” she added with a smile, “for I have now been absent longer than was intended when we left home.”

“And I am going with her, mother, to ask her uncles’ consent. She thinks they will give it without hesitation,” he added with an admiring smile into the eyes of his betrothed; “and should they not, I will try argument and persuasion; which should be quite in a lawyer’s line.”

“Yes; but I hardly fear you will need to use much of either,” replied his mother with a look that seemed to say anyone might be proud to claim relationship to her boy.

But a gentle tap on the door of the room interrupted the conversation at that moment, and at a quiet “Come in” from Mrs. Landreth, Stuart Ormsby entered with Blanche upon his arm.

“We have come for your blessing, Aunt Mildred, as the nearest representative of my father and mother,” he said, turning a beaming face upon her, “for this dear girl has promised to be mine; if her uncles do not object, which she assures me they will not. And, perhaps she will give herself to me even if they should prove so unreasonable and unkind.”

“Don’t be too sure of that, Mr. Ormsby,” said Blanche demurely; “one should show great respect for the opinions of one’s elders. Do you not think so, Mrs. Landreth?”

“Yes, dear child,” returned Mildred, drawing the young girl to her and bestowing upon her a tender caress, “and I think we need scarcely fear to do so in this case; for my sister’s son seems to his Aunt Mildred worthy to mate with the best and greatest lady in the land.”

Stuart’s eyes sparkled as he said heartily, “Many thanks, auntie; I could not ask for a higher recommendation than that.”

“Now,” said Mildred, leading the way, “suppose we go downstairs and see what your Uncle Don and the other relatives here have to say about it.”

Uncle Don had no objection to offer, nor did he or anyone else seem other than well pleased with the turn affairs had taken.

Ethel and Blanche returned home the next day accompanied by their suitors, who were not long in entering their plea with the uncles who, knowing all about them as relatives of the Keiths, and fellow-soldiers and intimates of their own sons during the last year of the war, at once gave a hearty consent, and claimed the privilege and pleasure of entertaining the young men during their stay of a day or two in the city of brotherly love.

Ethel and Blanche were also persuaded to become for a few days the guests of their uncles, and it was only after the departure of Percy and Stuart that they went back again to their own little home and reopened their store.

Harry returned to them, and it was hard at first to feel that Nannette would never again make one of the little family, yet gradually they learned to do without her dear presence and to go cheerfully about their daily tasks—the care of house and store and the making up of garments, daintily adorned, for the trousseaus likely to be wanted for the coming year.

Harry was not displeased at the prospect before his sisters, yet felt, and sometimes remarked, that their gain would be his loss. Hearing him talk in that way one day, his Uncle George said:

“You must come back to your old home with us, my boy, when your sisters go. And if that does not satisfy you, perhaps we may decide to open a branch house in their town and put you in charge of it.”

“Oh, Uncle George, what a delightful idea!” exclaimed Blanche; “for then all our little family would be together.”

“And you won’t miss your uncles at all,” he returned half sadly, yet with a faint smile, and laying a hand caressingly upon her shoulder as she sat on the sofa by his side.

“Oh, uncle, yes; yes, indeed!” she answered earnestly, tears springing to her eyes, “you have been so very, very good to us. And oh, I shall be sorry to leave Dorothy, who nursed Nannette so kindly and has been such a lovely comforter and helper to us in all our sorrow and cares.”

“Yes, Dorothy is a good, kind-hearted, helpful girl,” he responded, “almost as dear to me as my own nieces; even the two who have no father to love and care for them.”

“Dear uncle, it makes me feel very happy to hear you say you love Ethel and me. I don’t remember that ever you told me so before, though I always thought you did—at least a little bit,” Blanche returned, her eyes shining, while she ventured to put an arm about his neck and touch his cheek with her lips.

“A good big bit, my dear child,” he said in reply, putting an arm about her and returning her caress with interest. “I hope you will be very happy in the new home which that young man is getting ready for you, but that you won’t entirely forget your old uncles who have loved and tried to provide for their dead brother’s children.”

“Not dead, uncle dear, but only gone before to the better land,” Ethel said in tones tremulous with emotion. “No, no, indeed; we could not possibly forget you or Uncle Albert, who has been so very kind to us; if we could we ought to be considered the basest of ingrates.”

“I agree with you there, Ethel,” said Harry. “And Uncle George, I am delighted with the idea you have advanced. I think I should like nothing better; and in case you decide to try the experiment I promise to do my very best to make it a success.”

“Well, my boy, I will talk to my brother about it. Ah, here he is,” as at that moment Mr. Albert Eldon entered the room.

“What was that you were talking of as I came in?” he asked when he had exchanged greetings with his nieces and taken an offered armchair.

At that his brother told of the suggestion he had made to Harry, concluding by asking his opinion of the matter.

“I think it might be very well to try it,” returned Mr. Albert, “but we will be better able to decide that question after learning more about the place from Percy and Stuart; their fathers too, who will probably be the better judges of the wisdom of such an undertaking.”

“Very well, then, we will take the thing into consideration; and in the meantime let you, Harry, make the needed enquiries,” said Mr. George; then turned the talk upon other topics, asking his nieces what was the time fixed upon for the weddings.

“It is not fixed yet, uncle,” replied Ethel with a blush and smile, “but we talk of some day early in June.”

“The month of roses!” he said. “There is no lovelier time in the year to my thinking, and I hope weather and everything else may prove propitious. But what about the trousseau for each of you? Your Uncle Albert and I wish to provide that.”

“Thank you very, very much, uncles!” exclaimed both the girls in a breath; “but we think you have already done more than we had any right or reason to expect.”

“Not more by any means than we are disposed to do for our dead brother’s children,” he replied, Mr. Albert adding, “No, nor nearly so much. I will give each a hundred dollars to be laid out in that way.”

“And I will do the same,” added their Uncle George, “and I want the double wedding to take place in my parlor, Albert and I dividing the expense between us. We have talked it all over calculating the probable cost.”

“Oh, how kind and generous you are, uncles!” exclaimed Ethel, her eyes full of grateful tears; “but it will make so much work for——”

“No matter for that,” interrupted her Uncle George with simulated gruffness. “Mrs. Wood and Dorothy will be only too glad of the opportunity to make a grand display of refreshments and so forth, and will enjoy seeing how the brides are dressed, how pretty they look, and how they behave—with what modest grace they carry off their honors. Besides your Aunt Sarah wants to see the ceremony and cannot well get out to look upon it in any other place.”

“And there is no place that I should like better, uncle,” said Blanche, her face beaming with pleasure. “It is my old home, where I was always so kindly treated by you, and no other place could be more like a father’s house for me to be married from.”

“But mine I hope would not be less like a father’s house to you, Blanche?” remarked Mr. Albert Eldon, looking affectionately into her eyes.

“No, uncle, dear, yours would be just about the same, for I cannot make up my mind which of you I love the best,” returned Blanche, giving to him also a look of ardent affection. “I have only one regret in going away to my new home—that I must leave you two, and other dear relatives behind.”

“That is my case also,” said Ethel, “but we will hope for many a good visit from the dear ones we must part from for a time when we go.”

“And the visits must be returned,” said Uncle Albert, “and you two being so much younger than my good brother and I, must expect to give two to one.”

“Yes, that would be only fair,” said his brother. “Ah, Ethel, I hear that my prospective nephews are making ready some pretty cages for their birds.”

“They are both building, sir,” replied Ethel with a smile and a blush; “but the cages are to accommodate themselves as well as their mates, and each is to be a gift from the father of the future owner. They have sent us the plans, and we are delighted with them.”

“They are submitted to us for any alteration we may desire to suggest,” added Blanche, “but we can think of scarcely any improvement. They are to be side by side, the gardens running together, and face the river, which we are told is a beautiful stream of clear, rapidly flowing water, the banks green to its very edge. And the houses of the parents of the male birds,” she added with a merry laugh, “are less than a square away. Would you like to see the plans, uncles?”

The reply was a pleased assent from both, and she brought them. They examined them with evident interest, making favorable comments, asking some questions, and suggesting a few slight alterations which they thought would be improvements.

“Very desirable residences they seem likely to be,” was Mr. George Eldon’s comment when they had finished their inspection, “and I trust they will prove happy homes to my nieces.”

“Ethel and I mean to try to make them such to their owners,” remarked Blanche with an arch look and smile. “Of course, having never seen the place ourselves, we can only take the word of those who have as to the beauty of the surroundings; but I feel sure I shall better enjoy gazing upon a beautiful, clear, swiftly flowing river, grass, flowers, and trees, than upon brick pavements and white shutters, white marble doorsteps and the like, so trying to the eyes.”

“No doubt of it,” said her Uncle Albert, “but life will have its troubles and trials, whether it be passed in city or country. You must not expect paradise, even in a snug little home of your own with a kind husband indoors, and clear flowing waters, flowers, and other lovely things outside.”

“No, I do not, uncle,” she said laughingly, “yet I cannot divest myself of the idea—the hope—that the contemplated change will be for the better, even if I have the troublesome charge of a man’s happiness committed to my care; his happiness at least so far as a neat, well-kept home and well-spread table can secure it.”

“Well, my dear child, though not everything, they are a great deal to a man, and if you add a cheerful, sunny temper, and all needed care and attention to his comfort in other matters, I think he will be blessed with a happy home and a wife whom he can respect and love, probably with increasing affection as the years roll by, your own love for him increasing also.”

“You are looking very grave, Ethel,” he added, turning to her, “do you not agree with me in the sentiments I have expressed?”

“Oh, yes, sir; yes, indeed!” she answered in earnest tones, “and I have a very ardent desire, a very determined purpose to do all in my power to make a happy home for Percy—to be as good a wife and housekeeper as his mother is. I think there could not be a better, judging from all I have heard from him and the relatives we were with this summer—and I am resolved to learn all I can on those subjects from her. I wish you and Uncle George knew her, she is so lovely, so dear and good and kind. Oh, I think it will be delightful to be numbered among her daughters—especially after having been so long motherless.”

“Yes; I am glad for you, my dear,” he said, then turning to her sister, “But you, Blanche, it seems have not seen your future mother-in-law yet?”

“No, sir; but I am willing to risk the danger of finding her disagreeable, for Stuart has assured me she is no less lovable than his aunt, whom I like fully as much as Ethel does. Indeed like is hardly a strong enough word to express my feelings for either her or her daughters. I love them—all three of them—dearly.”

“That is right,” he said. “When do you give up here?” he asked, turning to Ethel. “Your year is out in April, is it not?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And the wedding is to be in June. I want you to come to my house to spend the weeks that intervene. You can make your preparations there, having all the help you want from dressmakers and seamstresses.”

“Don’t take more than your fair share, Albert,” said his brother; “a part of their time should be spent with us.”

“But you are going to give the wedding. Ah, well! they may come and go between the two houses as may suit their convenience and inclination, and you must let me bear my share of all the expenses.”

“Yes, brother, we will have an amicable settlement when all is over,” returned Mr. George as he rose to take leave, for it was nearing bedtime; and with an affectionate good-night to the nieces and nephew the two took their departure.

“Who has kinder uncles than ours?” exclaimed Blanche, as the door closed upon them. “It fairly gives me a heartache to think of going where I shall perhaps never see them again!” and she heaved a sigh which seemed to come from the bottom of her heart.

“Yes,” sighed Ethel, “how few earthly pleasures there are that do not bring some sorrow with them. But oh! it will not be so in the better land, for the Bible tells us there shall be no more death, sorrow, crying, or pain.”

“And Nan is there; dear, dear Nan, so peaceful and happy! Oh, I am sure she would not come back to earth if she could,” said Blanche softly, and wiping away a tear.