"I'll tell you, mamma. I've been thinking we need not keep Mahala, if you don't wish. She has been so used to do nothing but run round after Hendie, that, really, she isn't much good about the house; and I'll take Hendie's trundle bed into my room, and there'll be one less chamber to take care of; and you know we always dust and arrange down here." "Yes--but the sweeping, Faithie! And the washing! Parthenia never would get through with it all." "Well, somebody might come and help wash. And I guess I can sweep." "But I can't bear to put you to such work, darling! You need your time for other things." "I have ever so much time, mother! And, besides, as Aunt Faith says, I don't believe it makes so very much matter _what_ we do. I was talking to her, the other day, about doing coarse work, and living a narrow, common kind of life, and what do you think she said?" "I can't tell, of course. Something blunt and original." "We were out in the garden. She pointed to some plants that were coming up from seeds, that had just two tough, clumsy, coarse leaves. 'What do you call them?' said auntie. 'Cotyledons, aren't they?' said I. 'I don't know what they are in botany,' said she; 'but I know the use of 'em. They'll last a while, and help feed up what's growing inside and underneath, and by and by they'll drop off, when they're done with, and you'll see what's been coming of it. Folks can't live the best right out at first, any more than plants can. I guess we all want some kind of--cotyledons.'" Mrs. Gartney's eyes shone with affection, and something that affection called there, as she looked upon her daughter. "I guess the cotyledons won't hinder your growing," said she. And so, in a few days after, Mahala was dismissed, and Faith took upon herself new duties. It was a bright, happy face that glanced hither and thither, about the house, those fair summer mornings; and it wasn't the hands alone that were busy, as under their dexterous and delicate touch all things arranged themselves in attractive and graceful order. Thought straightened and cleared itself, as furniture and books were dusted and set right; and while the carpet brightened under the broom, something else brightened and strengthened, also, within. It is so true, what the author of "Euthanasy" tells us, that exercise of limb and muscle develops not only themselves, but what is in us as we work. "Every stroke of the hammer upon the anvil hardens a little what is at the time the temper of the smith's mind." "The toil of the plowman furrows the ground, and so it does his brow with wrinkles, visibly; and invisibly, but quite as certainly, it furrows the current of feeling, common with him at his work, into an almost unchangeable channel." Faith's life purpose deepened as she did each daily task. She had hold, already, of the "high and holy work of love" that had been prophesied.