Mrs. Grey proceeded on her way, on a bitterly cold day, when so much ice had formed in the harbor that crossing the ferry occupied hours instead of minutes. Foreseeing that return before the morrow would be impossible, she sent a dispatch home to that effect, and at last, weary and benumbed, presented herself to the Grosgrains.

She found them too absorbed in tribulation to concern themselves about her condition, and all talked together with briny tears, telling an incoherent story, out of which she at last got at these facts:

A young man, to whom Miss Grosgrain had engaged herself on board the steamer that brought them from England, had so won their confidence that they were gradually led to put their entire business affairs into his hands. He conducted them, for a time, so well that they congratulated themselves that their fortune had ceased to be a care to them. Recently he had received letters from his mother summoning him to take possession of a large property, to which he had become heir through his father's death, and had urged to have the marriage celebrated at once, and that they should all accompany the happy pair to Europe, there to live in almost regal splendor. Charmed with the prospect, they sold their palatial residence, their horses, plate, furniture, and prepared for a grand flight. But when all was in trim, one little item disappeared—namely, the foreign lover—who forgot to refund the sums in his hands, the result of the sale, and had also contrived to possess himself of their whole fortune. Whither he had disappeared they failed to learn; and here they were, huddled together in a house no longer theirs, as miserable a group as one need to see.

Why had they sent for Mrs. Grey in particular? Well, with a vague hope that she would help them in some way; she had the reputation of being everybody's right hand. And she had come to help them, and listened with real sympathy to their story.

"Have you done everything that can be done to arrest the fugitive?" she asked.

"Yes; he has fled to some country where he will be safe, and live in luxury while we starve here."

"You have your jewels left; they will carry you along till you have time to bethink yourselves what to do next."

"Oh!" groaned Miss Grosgrain, "our jewels are gone too. Our seamstress, Jane, whom we trusted as we did each other, disappeared at the same time with—with that wretch, whose name I never will speak as long as I live—and took almost all our valuables with her. No doubt she was his accomplice, and has left the country with him."

"It will be necessary, then, to seek remunerative employment," Mrs. Grey said, as cheerfully as she could; "now let me see what gifts you have."

"Employment!" shrieked the girls. "What a disgrace!"

"Why call it disgrace, when thousands of women are engaged in it? Refined and well-educated women, too."

"So I tell the girls," said Mrs. Grosgrain. "If we set still and do nothing, we shall starve."

The quartette was too full of dismay to correct the maternal grammar, and listened in gloomy silence.

"We never had to work for our living," pursued Mrs. Grosgrain, "but the girls' marmer had to, and she was a master-hand at tailoring. And they've all took after her. Mary can make as handsome a bonnet as any milliner, and so can Flora; and the others can cut and fit beautifully."

"But there was a deal of money spent on your education," said Mrs. Grey, turning to the young ladies; "could you not open a school?"

She knew they could not, but thought it best to make them face the situation for themselves.

"They never took to their books," said Mrs. Grosgrain. "And they never thought to come to this. But they're all handy, like their marmer."

"Then the hands must come to the rescue," said Mrs. Grey, looking brightly into the sad faces around her.

"What a disgrace!" cried Miss Grosgrain. "We who were born to so much better things!"

"I think we were all born to the lot in which we find ourselves," said Mrs. Grey, kindly. "Poverty is no disgrace, nor is work; I would rather see one of my daughters employed as a housemaid, than living a life of ease and luxury and pleasure. In the one case I should hope to see her forming a useful character; in the other I should expect to see her a mere cumberer of the ground. Now, you have asked me to advise you, and I will try to do it. Have you any friends who will aid you until you begin to support yourselves?"

They shook their heads mournfully. Their money had plenty of friends; personally, they had none.

"We have to leave this house in a week," said Mrs. Grosgrain. "The party that owns it is going to pull it all to pieces."

"I would as lief die, as to work for my living!" cried Miss Grosgrain.

"Providence has not given you the choice," said Mrs. Grey, gravely. "And all that looks so distressing now, may, through Him, become a benediction."

"I had a little money hid away," said Mrs. Grosgrain, brightening up. "I always mistrusted that our luck wouldn't always last, and now and then I hid gold pieces away. But my memory has failed of late years, and I don't remember exactly where I put it. 'Twa'n't all in one place, and when we sold out I forgot all about it. If we could stay in the house long enough, I guess I could find some of it."

"To whom did you sell out?"

"To James J. Sheldon."

"Ah! He is a friend of mine. I can easily persuade him to allow you to stay. He could do nothing to the house in this cold weather."

"Still, it isn't likely if we find the money that it will amount to anything; and, for my part, I wish I was dead."

Hereupon ensued fresh bursts of tears all around.

"My dear," asked Mrs. Grey, seriously, "where should you be if you were dead?"

"I could not be worse off than I am now," was the sullen answer.

"You must excuse the way she talks," said Mrs. Grosgrain. "She never had no trouble before, and it sets her ag'inst everything. I'm older, and don't feel so bad. If it wasn't for seeing the girls so full of trouble, I should say I hadn't felt so comfortable these twenty year."

Poor Mrs. Grosgrain, do you know the reason? You have been snubbed more than "twenty year" by these four young women, and now they let you alone, and you are jogging on in such English as you please; and what a relief it is! Take an old hat, and the more you brush it, the worse it looks. No amount of labor could make a real lady out of one whose instincts were not refined. It was not going to be the hardship to her to descend to what she sprang from, as to these girls who had never been there with her. To make a long story short, however, Mrs. Grey never rested till she had found employment for them all. At first their pride fell flat, and they struggled against their fate in a way that put all her energy to the test; but contact with her strong and steadfast nature at last told upon them all. In the strictest sense of the word, she rescued them from the ruin to which prosperity was leading them; or, rather, she fell in with the Providential plan for their rescue, and helped carry it out.

Now, why all this self-sacrifice and labor for five ill-bred, ill-tempered women, with whom she had not five thoughts in common?

Well, she saw in them now what she always had seen—human beings to be saved or to be lost; she had kept up an acquaintance with them for years, on the mere chance of sometime finding an entrance to their souls; and she found it "after many days."

Even most of her children did not understand this; they loved and respected her too much to call her Quixotic, yet fancied such people as the Grosgrains unworthy so much long patience, such journeys to and fro, such letters, such lines upon line. But they could have found ample explanation for all she did in the twenty-fifth chapter of Matthew. The fact is, the Grosgrains err in their way; but we err in ours when we draw our sanctified garments about us and pass by on the other side. An eagle may have a more ruinous fall than a butterfly, because he flies higher.

Meanwhile, there fell a shadow upon Greylock, and everybody in it. Belle's devoted little lover, Margaret's little pearl, fell sick. Only the mother observed the change in her at first, it was so nearly imperceptible; but as time passed, all had to own that there was a mysterious change, with no marked symptom of disease, except increasing silence and lassitude. Everybody's virtue came to the front now. They told her stories, they sang to her, her father and uncles walked the floor with her by the hour together when a strange restlessness was soothed by it. The elder children moved about the house on tiptoe; the younger ones, not quite up to the situation, but impressed by it, whispered to each other that they would play the "softest plays" they knew. The physician, early called in, was puzzled and helpless. Yet all were full of hope save Mrs. Grey and Belle. They did not tell each other what they feared, yet each saw it in each other's eyes. As the little creature became increasingly nervous and sensitive to noise, it was obvious that the household must be reduced in numbers, and, very reluctantly, most of them departed for their own homes.

Margaret's inexperience with children kept her long free from grave anxiety. There were days when Mabel would brighten and become as animated as ever; a new toy would give her pleasure, and she would take it to bed with her. Such days encouraged her inordinately.

"How strange it is that the doctor does not give her a tonic, when he sees how weak she is!" she kept saying. "Nothing ails her but want of strength."

She and Belle divided the nursing between them, and the one was as tender and devoted as the other, with this difference: Margaret was full of hope, and Belle full of misgivings.

"Where are you sick, my darling?" she asked, again and again, and the plaintive, weary little voice invariably answered: "Nowhere; only so tired, so tired."

"Cyril, I can't bear this suspense any longer," Belle said, at last. "As soon as I know what God wants of me, He shall have it, if it breaks my heart. You must make the doctor tell what he thinks."

"He seems completely puzzled," was the reply. "But I will ask him; and if it would be any relief to you, request a consultation."

"It would be a great relief. Cyril, Mabel is very ill."

"My dear, you exaggerate the matter. I have seen any number of sicker children, and known them to get well. I don't see, as Margaret says, why no tonic is given her."

"You will find out, if the doctor is frank with you. If my fears are well founded I know the reason."

"I did not know you had any definite fear."

"I have; and so has mamma, though she has not said so. We think there is some insidious disease on the brain."

"The brain!" he repeated. "Oh, Belle, what would you do without your devoted little worshipper?"

"What every one does who believes in Christ," said Belle, bursting into tears.

"Yes; you would give her to Him without a word," he said, earnestly, almost reverently; for while he loved his wife for her own sake and for her love to himself, he loved her far more for her whole-souled devotion to Christ.

He went out now to find the doctor and to propose a consultation.

The doctor caught at the suggestion eagerly.

"The case is an obscure one," he said. "The child's debility is very great, but I find no explanation of it unless there is some insidious disease upon the brain."

"So her mother thinks."

"Indeed? I am surprised at that. Yet I ought not to be surprised either, after knowing her all her life. She has her mother's quick intuitions. Well, I will arrange about the consultation, immediately."

"Could not I do that?"

"Why, yes, I will give you the address of the physician I call in for children. You will find him at his office to-morrow morning, at ten."

Mr. Heath was thankful to go. Men are generally as out of place in sick-rooms as steam engines; twenty times he had banged the door and made Mabel cry out, and Belle had shuddered again and again, at the sound of his newspaper, which he could have read just as well in the library.

The word "consultation" sent a chill to Margaret's heart. She rushed away to her own room, locked the door, threw herself on her face across the bed, and cried with that bitter, heart-breaking cry which had won the love and sympathy in which she had been revelling.

"God wouldn't do such a dreadful thing!" she at last said to herself. "Never was a child adored as Mabel is. There is not one among them all, half so sweet. Why should He take her? He won't! I know He won't! What a fool I am for crying so! And there is aunty slaving over the twins!"

She flew to the washstand and tried to remove the traces of her tears; then hurried to the nursery, where she found both babies fretting dismally, and Mrs. Grey doing her best to comfort them.

"I have been dreadfully selfish, aunty," she said, taking one of the twins from her. "I must have a very contracted mind, for it can only hold one thing at a time. I am as brimful of Mabel as a nest is full of birds."

"It isn't so much a contracted mind, as an exaggerating heart," was the reply. "You magnify every one you love, and every pursuit you engage in."

The nurses, who had been having their breakfasts, came now to the nursery, and Margaret drew Mrs. Grey away, to see if she could find comfort in her.

"God wouldn't do such a thing as to take away Mabel, would He, aunty?"

"I used to think He could not do these agonizing things; but He can, He does, and He knows why I have trembled for Belle when I have seen that steadfast little lover of hers follow her as the needle does the pole. It is Maud and her mother over again—only—"

She broke down now, but only for a moment, and asked Margaret's pardon as meekly as a child.

"Is it wrong, then, to cry?" asked Margaret, bewildered.

"It depends on the time and place, and how old one is. I don't think people of my age ought to indulge themselves by giving way to grief in which the spectator cannot share.

"'Bury thy sorrow, let others be blest,
Give them the sunshine, tell Jesus the rest.'"

It was now Margaret's turn to feel humbled.

"How could I forget, even for a moment, how you had been afflicted?" she cried, passionately. "But you are so strong, and so patient, and so cheerful, and hide your scars away so carefully, that it is hard to realize that you ever had a sorrow. But, aunty, what will Belle do if she loses Mabel?"

"'She will behave and quiet herself as a child weaned of his mother.'"

Just then the door opened, and Mabel came quietly in. Both were startled, for she rarely moved about the house now. She saw that they had been crying, and came and put an arm around each.

"What makes everybody cry?" she asked. "Is anybody dead?"

Even Margaret was astonished at the sunny smile with which Mrs. Grey instantly diverted the child's attention.

"See," she said, opening a drawer, "what I forgot to give you at Christmas."

Mabel looked in and saw a snow-white dove nestled there.

"Oh!" she said, "when I get well I will dance for joy! Grandmamma, I am not so tired to-day as I was yesterday. May I hold my baby a little while and show him this lovely dove?"

"You may try, darling."

They carried her up to the nursery and put the baby in her arms, but she could not hold him, and burst into tears. They were the last she ever shed.

The doctors came in the course of the day, and examined her from head to foot carefully.

"Does your head ache even a little?" they asked.

"No."

"Where are you sick, then? Put your hand on the place, dear."

"There isn't any place."

"How are her nights?"

"Very restless," said Belle, whose eye was reading every thought of the physicians, as if the faces they fancied so well-trained were open books. "She talks and moans in her sleep, and sometimes has painful dreams."

Mabel, nearly as keen as her mother, though in a different way, detected a tender, almost mournful glance between her physicians, at this answer, and reached out a little hand to each. They had to fight to keep back the tears, as their fingers closed over her wasted ones. All her life the child had had these touching ways which it is not possible to describe; one of the secrets of the peculiar way in which she attracted every one.

After a few more questions the physicians withdrew, promising to return on the following day. Mr. Heath followed them, but learned nothing definite. Mabel had a dreadful night; all the symptoms of water on the brain, hitherto wanting, came on with great force. How they lived through the next harrowing two weeks they hardly knew. Many whom Mrs. Grey had blessed in similar scenes, came now, full of tender sympathy to help support them through the fortnight in which the patient little lamb died daily, so distressing was her exhaustion. They were prayed for by hundreds some of them had never seen; and their faith failed not.

For a week the bright eyes remained open, and there was no sleep. They had ceased asking for her life, but prayed for the mercy of rest.

And at last it came, and the weary eyes were closed. They knelt around the bed and gave thanks. Then came one of those quick decisions on Margaret's part, that dotted her whole life as with stars. She put off her tears, went quietly to her room, and on a wide white ribbon, with teeth set hard together, began to paint. So, when Belle went to take her parting look at her darling before the funeral, there lay upon the coffin, within the ribbon, delicate flowers and green sprays, with the words:

"Now I lay me down to sleep."

It was an inexpressible comfort, and Margaret was rewarded by the most loving embrace she had known for years.

"You are entering on mamma's mission of sympathizer very early," said Belle. "God bless you for it. After this you will be associated with every thought of my darling."

"I think God has special love for those He takes so early," said Mrs. Grey. "Dear little Mabel's character was unusually lovely, and now it will never be anything else."

Belle struggled to speak, but could not. At last she said:

"I cut this epitaph from a newspaper when quite a young girl. How little I then thought how it would come home to me!

"'Oh!' said the gardener, as he passed down the garden-walk, 'who plucked that flower? Who gathered that plant?' His fellow-servant answered, 'The Master!' and the gardener held his peace.'"