The housekeeper's room, to which she now led the little Elsie, was a cheery, pleasant place, On a small round table, covered with snowy satin-like damask, and a service of glittering silverware, cut glass and Sevres china, a tempting little repast was laid out for the two.

Mrs. Murray took her seat, and Aunt Chloe lifted Elsie into a high chair opposite.

The little one closed her eyes, folded her baby hands and bent reverently over her plate, while Mrs. Murray asked, in a few simple words, a blessing on their food.

Aunt Chloe waited on them while they ate, devoting herself particularly to her infant charge, as another servant was in attendance, then withdrew to the servants' hall to eat her own supper.

And now Mrs. Murray, seating herself in a low rocking-chair, took the child on her lap.

Elsie nestled in her arms, laid her head on her shoulder, and softly patting her cheek, said, "I love you, Mrs. Murray."

"I dinna doubt it, my sweet, bit lassie, and I love you too; dearly, dearly," the good woman returned, accompanying the words with tender, motherly caresses. "And the dear Lord Jesus loves you better still, darling. Never forget that, never doubt that you are His own precious lambkin, and that He is always near to hear you when you pray."

"Yes, I know," answered the child, "Jesus loves little children, Jesus loves little Elsie. And some day He'll let Elsie go to live wis Him and wis her sweet, pretty mamma. Jesus loves my mamma, and lets her live 'long wis Him."

"Yes, dear, she is there in that happy land. And uncle has gone to be with her now."

The child started, lifted up her head, and gazing earnestly, questioningly into the housekeeper's eyes, asked, "Uncle gone too? Will he come back again?"

"No, dear bairn, they never want to come back from that blessed land; they are so happy there with the dear Saviour."

"Why didn't he take Elsie 'long!" cried the child, bursting into tears; "I want to go dere too."

"Jesus didn't send for you this time, sweet pet," the housekeeper answered with emotion, and folding the little form closer to her heart; "He would have you and me bide here yet a bit; but some day He will call us home too. He's getting a very lovely home ready for us there."

"For my papa too?"

"I trust so, darling."

"Where is my papa? why doesn't he come to Elsie."

"I don't know, my bonnie bairn. I think he will come some day."

"And take Elsie on his knee, and kiss her and love her?"

"Surely, surely, darling. And you have a grandpa, who will be here before many days, I trust."

"Grandpa that's gone to heaven?"

"No; that is Grandpa Grayson, your sweet mamma's father; this is Grandpa Dinsmore, your papa's father."

The child looked thoughtful for a moment, then with a joyous smile exclaimed, "Elsie's so glad! I wish he'd come now. Elsie will love him ever so much."

"May the Lord open his heart to love you in return, sweet bairnie," sighed the good woman. "But not to take you frae me," she added mentally.

The child pleaded for "stories 'bout mamma; Elsie's mamma when she was little girlie, and played wis her little brothers and sisters."

Mrs. Murray having been housekeeper at Viamede for nearly twenty years, had a plentiful store of these laid up in her memory. Each one had been repeated for the little girl's entertainment a score of times or more, but repetition seemed to have no power to lessen their interest for her.

"Why doesn't Elsie have brothers and sisters?" she asked during a pause in the narration. "Elsie do want some so bad!"

"Our Father didna see fit to give you any, dear bairn; and so you must try to be content without," Mrs. Murray answered, with a tender caress; "we canna have all we would like in this world; but when we get home where the dear Lord Jesus is, we'll have nothing left to wish for; our cup o' joy will be full to overflowing. Now bid me good-night, my wee bonnie, bonnie darling, for here's mammy come to take you to bed."

The child complied with alacrity. She and her mammy were devotedly attached to each other, and had seldom been apart for an hour since the little girl first saw the light.

And the nurse, though wholly uneducated, was as simple-hearted and earnest a Christian as Mrs. Murray herself, and faithfully carried out the dying injunction of the young mother, to try to teach her little one, from her earliest years, to love and fear the Lord.

She talked and sang to her of Jesus before she was a year old, and as soon as she began to speak, taught her to kneel night and morning with folded hands and lisp her little prayer. And she, too, told her sweet stories of the mother she had never known, of the beautiful home whither she had gone, of the loving Saviour who was with her there, and also on earth watching over her darling.

Every night she rocked her to sleep in her arms, soothing her to rest with these ever new stories, and the sweet wild melodies common among her race.

Aunt Chloe had known sorrows many and bitter, not the least of them the untimely death of Elsie's mother, and with none left to her in whose veins her own blood flowed, clung to this nursling with a love that would have hesitated at no sacrifice for the good of its object, a passionate, yearning tenderness that would have led her to choose death for herself rather than separation. The big tears chased each other down her sable cheeks at the bare thought of such a possibility, as she held her sleeping treasure in her arms that night.

She knew little of the child's father, nothing whatever of the grandfather or any other of the paternal relatives, and her heart misgave her lest there might be trouble in store for herself and her beloved charge.

Some one came in softly through the open door, and Chloe looked up with the tears still on her cheeks, to find the housekeeper close at her side. "What is it, Aunt Chloe?" she asked, in a tone of alarm; "the dear bairn is not ill?"

Chloe only shook her head, while her bosom heaved with half-suppressed sobs.

"Ah, I know what it is!" sighed Mrs. Murray; "your heart trembles wi' the vera same fear that oppresses mine:—lest the darling o' our dear love be torn frae our arms. But we winna greet for sorrow that may never come; we winna doubt His love and power who doeth all things well. Let us no forget that He loves her better far than we do.

"Said the saintly Rutherford, 'I shall charge my soul to believe and to wait for Him, and shall follow His providence, and not go before it, nor stay behind it.' Let us make the same resolve, Aunt Chloe, and be happy while we may; be happy alway; for His loving kindness shall never fail.

"Dinna ye mind his word, 'I am the Lord who exercise loving kindness, judgment and righteousness in the earth; for in these things I delight, saith the Lord?'"

"Ef dey take my bressed lamb away, dis ole heart break for sure!" sobbed Chloe, clasping the child closer. "I's done gone los' eberyting else!"

"No, no, Aunt Chloe! not the Lord!"

"No, missus, not de Lord! dat true. Hope He forgib de sinful word!"

"And not the hope of heaven!"

"No, no, missus, not dat either, bress His holy name!"

"It is a world of trial, Aunt Chloe, but He never sends one that is na needful for us; and 'when His people cannot have a providence of silk and roses, they must be content with such an one as he carveth out for them.' 'How soon would grace freeze without a cross!'"

"Dat true, missus; an' we mus' take de cross first or we can't hab de crown at de las'," she assented with a heavy sigh. "Missus, do you know what gwine be done now? will dey sell de plantation?"

"Oh, no! it belongs to the bairn."

"De servants?"

"I don't think there is any danger o' that either; for they, too, are hers."

Aunt Chloe breathed more freely. "Will Massa Dinsmore come an' lib heyah hisself?" she asked.

"That I canna tell," Mrs. Murray said, shaking her head and sighing slightly. "But, Aunt Chloe, I dinna think ye need fear bein' parted frae the bairn. They may take her frae me, but they'll no be likely to separate her from her mammy; wherever she goes you will, in a' probability, go also."

Chloe asked if Elsie was to be taken away from Viamede; to which the housekeeper answered that she did not know; indeed, nothing could be known till Mr. Dinsmore came.

"But," she added, "whether the sweet Bairn's home be here or elsewhere, an attendant will be needed, and I see no reason why the old mammy, who loves her sae dearly, should be exchanged for another. I wad be blithe to think myself as secure o' bein' kept near her; but they're no sae likely to want a housekeeper as a nurse, should they decide to change her abode."

"Tank de Lord for dat!" ejaculated Aunt Chloe, half under her breath, as she rose and gently laid the sleeping child in her bed. "I tink my bressed lamb neber be happy widout her ole mammy to lub her, an' I hopes dey'll let you stay too, missus. I'e afraid Massa Dinsmore not care much 'bout his little chile; 'cause ef he do, why he neber come for to see her?"

The words sounded to Mrs. Murray like the echo of her own thoughts.

"I dinna understand it," she whispered, bending over the little one to press a tender kiss on the softly rounded, rosy cheek. "I canna comprehend it; but the sweet wean has had a happy life thus far, and please God, Aunt Chloe, she'll ne'er want for love while he leaves her in our care."