"Margaret, do stop that horrid screeching! You make my head fairly snap." The music suddenly ceased. The sharp voice came from the pantry, and belonged to Margaret's mother, Mrs. Murray. She stood before her moulding board weighing out chopped raisins, currants, flour, butter, and all the other ingredients that go to make a fruit-cake. The deep-cut frown between her eyes, the worried expression, and the tightly-shut lips told their own story.

The singer stood at the kitchen-table washing the breakfast dishes—a pretty picture, with her sixteen years just blossoming into pink cheeks and bright eyes—a trim and dainty figure even in her simple dark print and white apron. She looked so happy and caroled forth her song so gaily, while she wiped the delicate china cups on the soft towel. If her mother could but have seen her, would she so rudely have jarred the bright spirit? And this was Margaret. She, too, could frown; now the straight black brows drew themselves together in an ugly way on the white forehead, the cheeks took a deeper pink, and the bright eyes had a snap in them. She flung the cups on the table in place of the almost loving touches she had bestowed upon them. The clatter went on, and at last a luckless cup reeled, and rolled to the very edge of the table, and—off it went! shivering into many fragments. This brought Mrs. Murray to the pantry door.

"Well, I never saw anything like you for carelessness," she said in a high-keyed voice.

"There goes another of that set! You were vexed, or that wouldn't have happened. I heard how you slammed about after I spoke to you. Now pick up the pieces and go away. I will wash them myself."

Every nerve in the girl's body fairly quivered. Her mother had touched her on a tender point. She had been drilled by her music-teacher for a long time on the high notes of a difficult piece of music, and she had just succeeded in trilling it out to her own satisfaction and delight, when she was startled by her mother's voice. Poor Margaret! She had a hot temper, and when the severe reprimand for her carelessness was added, she felt so angry and disgraced that she would have said many a word to repent of, but happily she could not control her voice to speak. Every time she attempted it, a choking sob stood right in the doorway, and would not let the wicked words out.

Mrs. Murray was a pattern housekeeper, a model of neatness. Everything in her house shone, from the parlour windows to the kitchen stove. Her cake was always light, her bread sweet. No table could compare with hers for delicious variety. Her housekeeping was a fine art, before which everything else was made to bow. Her parlour was made most attractive in all its appointments, and everything that goes to make a pleasant home was lavishly supplied by her husband; yet a more uncomfortable family it would be hard to find.

The parlour was kept closed and dark, except on rare occasion. Flies, and dust, and mud were Mrs. Murray's avowed enemies. To overcome them was the chief end of her life; to this end she tortured her husband, and son, and daughters. Summer and winter she diligently pursued them, and many a tempest was evolved in that house from a source no greater than a muddy foot-print, or stray fly or two, for in summer the house was enclosed in wire screens, and heedless people were for ever leaving them open.

Economy, too, another most desirable virtue, was in this home made to appear almost a vice. She would not let the sunshine in, lest it would fade the carpet. She made her room dingy and unpleasant in the evening, to save gas. She would not make a fire in the parlour in the winter, because it wasted coal. She would not open it in summer because dust ruined the furniture. To make matters worse, Mrs. Murray was a woman made principally of nerves. She was a constitutional fretter. It must be said in her justification that she came of a nervous race. There are different kinds of nervous people; this family did not belong to that limp class who start with affright at every noise, or faint at sight of a spider. Their nerves were too tightly drawn, and like a delicate stringed instrument, when a rude touch came, snap! went a string, making all life's music into discord as far as they were concerned. The discord usually expressed itself in scolding. It is a real luxury for the time, to the wicked nerves to give somebody a sound beating. Mrs. Murray's mother and grandmother and great-grandmother had made a practice of scolding their children, their servants, and their husbands, when necessary, and it never seemed to occur to her that there was any other way to manage affairs.

Another antic those naughty nerves often indulged in, was nervous headache; when anything specially annoying took place, they met in convention in the top of the poor head, and held an indignation meeting; at such times Mrs. Murray was obliged to retreat to her own room. The increasing frequency of these attacks furnished her with an excellent reason for withdrawing herself from society almost entirely. She was not strong enough to entertain company. She was not strong enough even to attend church habitually. Her strength must all be given to her house and her table, for she was one of those housekeepers who consider economy out of place here; the cakes and pies and knick-knacks were counted a necessity, as well as more substantial food. Don't say Mr. Murray should not have chosen such a wife. He did not. This gloomy, fault-finding woman, bore no resemblance to the sweet, bright girl, he married. It had all come about so gradually that neither realized the great change.

Ralph, the only son, a fine, tall young man, just out of his teens, had lately been taken into his father's firm. He was noble and true, though in a little danger on account of his fondness for company, which, not being gratified at home, was taking him away from its safe boundaries to clubs, and questionable company and amusements, much more than pleased his father; but Ralph declared he must have some pleasure—"didn't want to mope in his room alone after being hard at work all day. As for home, there was nothing there, not even a good place to read—gas at the top of the wall in the dingy old dining-room, and the girls always out—or out of humour; he could do no better." Mr. Murray was uneasy: "Their home was sort of dismal; what was the matter?" The two daughters, just coming up to womanhood, also missed many of the pleasant surroundings and sweet sympathy that other girls seemed to have in their homes. With all her toil and doing, Mrs. Murray was letting her children slip, as it were, through her fingers. The house was well furnished, but there was no room bright and warm, with music and books and papers, where they gathered in the evening and strengthened the home ties.

No servant could long please Mrs. Murray, so the comers and goers to that kitchen for many years were numerous. Now she had hit upon a new plan. She could carry out some good old-fashioned notions she had about training girls in domestic matters. She would do her own work with such assistance as her daughters could give her out of school hours, calling in such help as they needed. But the project did not work well: the girls were always hurried; their school duties left very little time for anything else, so their household tasks were not always well or cheerfully performed, especially Margaret's. Her love for music amounted to a passion, and she grudged the time for practice; then their inexperience tried her mother's patience sadly, and brought the inevitable scoldings, and made Margaret's irritable nerves flash up to meet her mother's. But that Saturday morning that we began to tell about, it was such a very exasperating one all around. One thing after another happened to make things go wrong, till it fairly seemed as if some evil genius had affairs under control. The door opened and a sweet round face, framed by a sweeping cap, appeared. A graceful young girl armed with broom and dustpan stepped lightly across the kitchen, deposited her broom in the corner, and proceeded to empty the contents of the pan in the fire.

"Florence," spoke her mother sharply, "what do you mean by putting dust in the fire when you see this kettle of stewed cranberries on the stove?"

Florence started guiltily, spilling some of the dust on the stove in her agitation.

"There! now see what you have done! You two make more work than you do; and just see how you have stood the broom in the corner, instead of hanging it up, as I have told you a hundred times to do. It is more trouble to teach you than it is to do things myself. I wonder if you have just got through sweeping; such slow poking works, I could have done it twice over by this time. I don't see why I should be so tormented; other people have girls that amount to something." Mrs. Murray, down in her heart, believed there were no girls in all the kingdom like hers. Florence was accustomed to this sort of talk, and yet it hurt her sensitive, affectionate nature every time. The blue eyes took on no indignant light; instead, they filled with tears, which irritated her mother still more, and she said, with increased sharpness:

"There, go away. You are made of too fine stuff for common purposes; getting so touchy that not a word can be said to you."

Counting time by her mother's calendar, Florence had been a long time doing a little, but her nature was different from her mother's, all her movements were gentle. She had been reverently following her mother's directions. Her untiring patience ferreted dust out of every little corner where it had lodged in the furniture; she had mounted the step-ladder and dusted the pictures, had cleaned and polished all the little ornaments. True, she lingered a moment over a book of engravings, and to kiss a little statuette of "Prayer," but she thought she had done it all so nicely, and a little word of praise would have made her so happy. It was hard, when she had done her best, to have only fault-findings.

At a very critical stage of affairs in the pastry-making, Nettie Blynn knocked at the side door. She only wanted to see Maggie just a minute about the Christmas entertainment. Maggie set down a half-beaten dish of eggs and ran. The minute lengthened into many more, and the girls talked and talked, as girls will, forgetting all about time. When Margaret returned to the kitchen she found her mother in a perfect fever of haste, and poor Florence trying to go two or three ways at once.

"Now, Margaret," her mother began, "I might just as well depend upon the wind as you! drop everything and run the minute you are called. That is just as much sense as Nettie Blynn has, running to the neighbours Saturday morning, and staying like that, when I have so much to do. You don't seem to care whether you help me or not."

"Why, mother, how could I help it?" Margaret answered with spirit. "I didn't ask her to come, and I couldn't tell her to go away. Saturday morning is as good as any other time to her; she doesn't have to work all day Saturday, and how should she know that I do?"

Just here the front door-bell gave a malicious ting-a-ling. Mrs. Allan, an old friend who lived several miles out of town, had just a few minutes before train time; she was sure there was no one in the world she wanted to see so much as Mrs. Murray, and Mrs. Murray was just as sure that she herself wanted to see nobody just then, but there was no help for it. She washed the dough from her hands, and saying to Margaret, as she hurriedly left the kitchen:

"Finish that pie, and watch the fire; don't let that cake burn, nor the cranberries."

Alas! for Margaret. She became so absorbed in rolling the upper crust of the mince pie, and in trying to cut a beautiful pine-tree on it, that she forgot all about the fire, and the cake, and the cranberries. An odour, not savoury, came from the stove. Margaret rushed out, but it was too late; the cranberries sent up a dense black smoke, and were burned fast to the new porcelain kettle, and, horrors! on opening the oven door, the fruit-cake was a sight to behold—as black as a hat, and an ominous-looking valley in the centre of it!

"Flo! go tell mother to come here quick!" screamed Margaret.
"Everything has gone to destruction."

Any housekeeper can well imagine what a person, who did not hold firm rule over nerve and tongue would say under such aggravations. Although her mother's words stung like scorpions, Margaret did not attempt to excuse herself this time, for she felt keenly that she had been guilty of great neglect, and she would have told her mother so if the bitter words had not made her hard and sullen. The longer her mother talked, the less she felt that she cared for the consequences of her fault. This Saturday's work was unusual, not only because Christmas was near at hand, but an old aunt of Mrs. Murray's was coming from Philadelphia to make a visit. She had not visited her niece in many years. She also used to be a model housekeeper, and Mrs. Murray was anxious that everything should appear to the best advantage. At last the toil and strife of that day was over, the work was all done up and the girls sought their own room.

"Maggie," said Florence, "what do you suppose Aunt Deborah will bring us for Christmas presents?" Florence braided her golden locks as she talked, her face cheerful as usual. The trials of that day had left no mark on her sunny face. Not so with Maggie; the frown was still on her forehead, and she flung herself on the lounge in a despairing sort of way as she answered, "I'm sure I don't know nor care either, whether I ever get another present in my life."

"Why, Maggie! What's the matter?"

"The matter is that I am tired of this awful life. I work, work, and be scolded all the time. I wish Aunt Deborah was in Jericho, or anybody else that is coming to make more work for us. I could stand the work, though, but I can't stand scolding all the time. Mother hasn't said a pleasant word to me to-day."

"Sh—h!" said Florence. "Mother is sick and nervous. Don't you think if—if you wouldn't provoke mother so much it would be better? And then maybe"—Florence was almost afraid to speak her next thought—"don't you think you answer back a good deal sometimes?"

"There! you just hush up," said Margaret. "I guess you needn't set up for a lecturer, too; two years younger than I am, you are taking a good deal upon yourself, I should say. I'm nervous, too. Young folks are called cross, but older ones always called nervous, when they are cross. I wish I could go off somewhere. I'd go anywhere to get away from home, for it's just dreadful. Mother don't care for me one bit. She don't scold anybody else as she does me. When I go over to Mrs. Blynn's it just makes me sick. Nettie and her mother are just like two sisters. They sit under the drop-light with their fancy-work and talk, or Nettie plays her new pieces over for her mother. I could play as well as Nettie if I had time to practice, but mother don't seem to care anything at all about my music. We might keep a girl like other people. Father is able to. I think it is too bad."

"Oh, don't Mag! Don't say any more," said Florence. "It makes me shiver to hear you talk so. You know what it says about honouring parents. I'm sure something dreadful will happen to you. You will drop right down dead, maybe, or just think how you would feel if mother should die after you've talked so. Oh, Maggie," she said timidly, "if you only were a Christian, now, how it would help you."

"Pho," said Margaret. "Mother is a Christian and it don't help her one bit."

Then Margaret put her head down on the arm of the lounge and cried.
She had wanted to cry all day, but there was no time.

The door stood partly open between Mrs. Murray's room and that of her daughters. That ruined fruitcake had accomplished its work, the severe nervous headache had come and obliged her to go up to her room and lie down, while the girls supposed her to be still in the dining-room; so the talk came floating in to her while she lay on her bed pressing her aching temples. What a revelation was this! Was it possible that she was the person meant? One daughter blaming her, and the other excusing her. She almost forgot about her head in this new pain. The first feeling was one of indignation and wounded pride, but conscience told her it was all true, that she was a cross, fretful mother, that she had not made her home a happy one, that she had been selfish and unsympathetic and her children were getting estranged from her. But the last few words touched her most of all. "Her religion did not help her." Sure enough it did not, any more than a pagan's, and she had brought dishonour on Christ. The veil had suddenly fallen from her eyes. She excused herself from tea on plea of a headache, telling each one who came softly to the door asking to minister to her, that she wanted nothing but quiet. She wanted to face this dreadful revelation all alone, and yet there came no high resolve that hereafter everything should be different. She lay there disconsolate, discouraged—a mere heap, it seemed to herself, weak, purposeless, a soul who had made a failure of life, with no power to alter it. If she might but slip out of the world entirely; it was all turned to ashes. How small and mean her ambitions all seemed now. She had given years of drudgery and this was the result: made her family miserable.

Mrs. Murray was one of those who keep the inner sanctuary of their hearts shut and barred, lest some foolish tenderness should find expression; it was there, though, and those dreadful words her dear eldest daughter had spoken were to her like the stab of a knife. Like most nervous persons, her feelings were intense. Such condemnation, remorse, and utter despair as took hold of her: it could not be called repentance, for that has "A purpose of heart and endeavour after new obedience." She was in the Slough of Despond. The twilight had deepened into darkness, when sounds indicated an arrival.

"Aunt Deborah has come," Florence whispered at the door. "You lie still, mother, and Mag and I can do everything just as nicely."

But "mother" hastily arose and met her visitor as calmly as if she had not spent the last three hours in a tempest.

Aunt Deborah Hathaway was a dear old saint. Her name should have been "Peace," for that word was written all over her, from the unruffled brow and calm eyes, to the soft folds of her dove-coloured cashmere.

"Tell me all about your life, my dear," she said to Mrs. Murray, when they were seated alone the next morning—all the rest of the family in church.

"My life has turned out to be a failure," said Mrs. Murray, sadly.
"And what is strange, I have only just now found it out."

Then drawn on by the loving sympathy expressed, she unburdened her heart to Aunt Deborah, keeping back nothing. "But then, what am I telling all this to you for? Nobody can help me. I have at times realised that I was growing very irritable, and was ashamed of it. Then I would resolve that I would not do so any more, but my resolves are like ropes of sand. I get started and can't stop. I think if human beings were like sewing-machines, and when they get out of order, could have some skilful hand just put a drop of oil here and there, and loosen the tension or something, it would be so good. But things do annoy me so, sometimes it seems as if Satan himself planned things out to vex me.

"I make no doubt," said Aunt Deborah, "but that Satan is busy enough, but sometimes I think he gets more set down to his account than rightfully belongs. He couldn't accomplish half he does with us if we didn't help him. We put ourselves in such a condition that it is easy for him to carry us captive. But you said 'nobody could help you.' Now I believe I can help you. I came very near being shipwrecked once myself on these very rocks you have struck. It will never do to give up, and go to groaning when we get into trouble. What you want is to get out of it. To help you in the best way, you must give me an old woman's privilege, and let me speak my mind freely. I think I know the secret of the trouble. Your nerves are sick—people used to think that meant hysterics, but they know better now. You are overworking these sick nerves. The first thing to be done is for you to get relief from everything that tries you, as far as you can. Treat yourself like an invalid, as you are. Then change your way of life entirely: go out a good deal in the air, read, and talk, and sing, and play on the piano—you used to be a good player, I remember. Let the housework and the sewing be done by somebody else, except what you can do without a strain upon yourself. Then I should be a little careful about my dress, to have it becoming and all that, and I would invite in a little company once in a while, and go out in a sociable way a little, and try to make my home just the brightest, cheeriest place in all the world. Economy is good in its place, but I believe Satan is even at the bottom of that sometimes, when we drive our boys and girls out from home by saving coal and gas, and shutting the sun out of our houses—they like brightness as well as the birds do. You see you can't tell me anything new on this. I made all these mistakes myself once."

"But Aunt Deborah," said Mrs. Murray, "I am surprised. I thought you used to be such a strict Christian."

"Used to be such a strict Pharisee, you mean," Aunt Deborah answered; "used to imagine religion consisted in wearing the ugliest garment I could put on, combing my hair straight back in a hard knot, being 'a keeper at home,' and making things generally uncomfortable for everybody. Now I think a Christian is one who loves and obeys his Lord. I know I love Him and I am trying to obey Him, but I believe if there is one place on the earth He loves next to the gates of Zion, it is a happy home, and that He smiles upon us in all our innocent efforts to make it so.

"You were surprised that I did not say right off, 'Pray over your troubles,' weren't you? No, no! I believe we have got to take everything out of our way that hinders us before we come and ask him to do some great thing for us. You must lay aside the 'weight,' and the temptations to the 'sin that doth so easily beset us,' then He will do his part. It isn't his way to do for us what we can do. Now if you load yourself down with burdens that He did not ask you to carry, I don't believe you will have the same grace given you to overcome that a poverty-stricken mother of a large family has given to her; grace is bestowed according to our need."

"Yes," said Mrs. Murray, "it is all true. But suppose I do all these things that you suggest. I can't expect to be entirely free from all provocations to anger while I live in this world. What is there in all this that will help me to control my temper? I declare to you, Aunt Deborah, I cannot do it. I have no hope that I can ever be different. I know myself so well."

"Praise the Lord that you know that," said the old lady. "He says, 'In me is thy help found.' Not a soul of us comes to him for help till we have made this discovery, 'I cannot do it.' When your watch is out of order you do not expect it to right itself; you take it to the watchmaker. Now lay your heart down before Jesus, and say, Lord won't you fix it for me? As you trust the watchmaker, trust Him."

"I want to be made over new," said Mrs. Murray sadly, "but oh, have I faith enough for such a great work? I am too unworthy, too far away from Him to expect it."

"Well, He is worthy. Don't you know good old Faber says:

"'Pining souls, come nearer Jesus;
Come, but come not doubting thus:
Come with faith that trusts more freely
His great tenderness for us.'"

And Mrs. Murray came. The promise, "Ask and it shall be given you," was verified to her. When the sun of that Sabbath set, the dove of peace sang in the tired woman's heart. She had the secret of victory. Her brow was almost as placid as Aunt Deborah's.

Monday morning brought the usual work and bustle, "Mary," said Aunt Deborah, "Satan is twice as active Monday morning as other days; perhaps he thinks we get the start of him on the Sabbath. Forewarned is forearmed. Here is my rule when provoked: To shut my lips tight and lock them till a pleasant word feels like coming."

"Yes, Aunt Deborah, Christ helping me, I shall make an entire revolution in this household." And she looked bright and courageous as she had not in years.

"To begin, then: Go out of this kitchen and come when you are called," said Aunt Deborah, briskly.

There was much work accomplished that day. A valuable servant was soon secured and installed in the kitchen; then Mrs. Murray went in and out the stores. No one in all the busy throng was more enthusiastic than she, as with joyful eagerness she selected some little gift for each, adding to her purchases a little stock of evergreens and flowers to brighten up with on the morrow, for this coming Christmas was to be no common one. Aunt Deborah engaged in the business of tying and festooning evergreens with all the gusto of a girl; the two made the parlour into a bower of beauty. When the short winter day drew to its close, the whole was pronounced complete, and Mrs. Murray went to her room to dress. She was strongly tempted to put on the same old gray dress she had worn all winter, and brush her hair straight back as usual; but self and ease should not be consulted, so she shook out her still handsome locks and arranged them in the style her husband used to admire, in loose waves about her forehead; then she donned a neatly fitting black dress, with lace cuffs and collar, fastened with a bright ribbon. When she went down to the parlour, Aunt Deborah looked over and then under her spectacles.

"Child," she said, as she surveyed her, "it does matter how you look."

Father, son, and daughters, all came in together to-night.

"Girls," said Ralph, advancing first into the dining-room and getting a peep into the back parlour, "is this our house? Everything is trimmed up, and there sits a lady by the fire."

Wreaths festooned the archway between the parlours, there were vases of flowers, and hanging-baskets of trailing vines, and a canary in a gilded cage, a bright fire in the grate lighting it up cheerily; Aunt Deborah smiling and knitting on one side, "mother" on the other. Florence rushed up to her, showering kisses upon her, while her father looked on with shining eyes.

"Who knew our mother was such a pretty woman? Where's her equal in this whole city?" said Ralph.

That glad Christmas was the harbinger of many happy years to the Murrays. The back parlour was that day, by the thankful mother, consecrated to the comfort of the family—thenceforth light, warmth, and beauty reigned in that room. There they gathered evenings, under the drop-light about the round table, with books and work, and talk and music. Father, too, suddenly discovered that there was a lull in business, and that cheerful chimney-corners were more attractive than ledgers. Ralph and the girls brought their young friends there. What was strangest of all, the nervous headaches almost entirely disappeared; even the high notes of a song, or the jingling of piano-keys, failed to bring them back. The crowning climax of the whole was this: there was positively no scolding in that house. The evil spirit had been exorcised, and that mother was given the victory day by day. Peace was in her heart and on her brow.

She was so changed in the eyes of her children that she seemed almost an object of adoration. Not the last drop in her cup of joy were the many little ways in which they showed their keen appreciation of the change in her.

One night, after all had retired, conscience knocked at Margaret's door. She tried to sleep, but her visitor persisted. Margaret was face to face with all her hard, impertinent words and ways toward her mother.

"Flo," she said, "a miracle has come to mother, or she's getting to be an angel, or something," but "Flo" was fast asleep; then she tossed and turned, again. Then came a tap on mother's door. Mrs. Murray came quickly.

"Mother," said Margaret, throwing her arms about her, and hiding her face in her mother's neck, "I have been a wicked girl. Forgive me, dear precious mother."

Blessed words! Margaret was soon sleeping quietly, but her mother's heart was so full, her joy so great, that she lay thinking of the gift that He had sent her at that Christmas time.

"Peace on earth," had been literally fulfilled to her.