"Yes, go, both of you, I shall be better alone; Allan knows that," with a grateful glance as I reluctantly obeyed her. I was too young to understand the healing effects of quiet and silence in a great grief; to me the thought of such loneliness was dreadful, until, later on, she explained the whole matter. "I am never less alone than when I am alone," she said once, very simply to me. "I have the remembrance of your dear father and his words and looks ever before me, and God is so near--one feels that most when one is solitary." And her words remained with me long afterward. It was not such a very sad evening, after all. The sea air had done Dot good, and he was in better spirits; and then Carrie was so good and sweet, and so pleased with everything. "How kind of you, Esther," she said, with tears in her eyes, as I led her into her little bedroom. "I hardly dared hope for this, and so near dear mother." Well, it was very tiny, but very pretty, too. Carrie had her own little bed, in which she had slept from a child, and the evening sun streamed full on it, and a pleasant smell of white jasmine pervaded it; part of the window was framed with the delicate tendrils and tiny buds; and there was her little prayer-desk, with its shelf of devotional books, and her little round table and easy-chair standing just as it used; only, if one looked out of the window, instead of the belt of green circling meadows, dotted over by grazing cattle there was the lawn and the mulberry tree--a little narrow and homely, but still pleasant. Carrie's eyes looked very vague and misty when I left her and went down to Dot. Allan had put him to bed, but he would not hear of going to sleep; he had his dormice beside him, and Jumbles was curled up at the foot of the bed; he wanted to show me his seaweed and shells, and tell me about the sea. "I can't get it out of my head, Essie," he said, sitting up among his pillows and looking very wide-awake and excited. "I used to fall asleep listening to the long wash and roll of the waves, and in the morning there it was again. Don't you love the sea?" "Yes, dearly, Dot; and so does Allan." "It reminded me of the "Pilgrim's Progress"--just the last part. Don't you remember the river that every one was obliged to cross? Carrie told me it meant death." I nodded; Dot did not always need an answer to his childish fancies, he used to like to tell them all out to Allan and me. "One night," he went on, "my back was bad, and I could not sleep, and Carrie made me up a nest of pillows in a big chair by the window, and we sat there ever so long after mother was fast asleep. "It was so light--almost as light as day--and there were all sorts of sparkles over the water, as though it were shaking out tiny stars in play; and there was one broad golden path--oh! it was so beautiful--and then I thought of Christian and Christiana, and Mr. Ready-to-halt, and father, and they all crossed the river, you know."