When the morning service was over, every one waited to ask how the Major was on this lovely Easter Sunday. Lately they had come to like his daughter far better than they had liked her at first; they said she talked more, that she was not so cold. Certainly there was nothing cold in her face, but a beautiful sweetness, as she rose from her knees and, taking Scar's hand, turned to go down the aisle. She answered their questions on the steps and in the church-yard. For on Easter morning Far Edgerley people always brought many flowers to church; then, after service, they took them out and laid them upon all the graves, so that, as Scar once said, "they could have their Easter Sunday too." Every mound had its blossoms to-day, and there were many upon the grave of the young stranger, Louis Dupont; this was because there was no one, they said, to remember him. So they all remembered him. A little before sunset Frederick Owen, having officiated at the Easter service of the Sunday-school and at one of his mission stations, was on his way to Carroll Farms. As he came up Carroll Lane and crossed the little bridge over the brook, he saw that there was more bloom here than anywhere else in all the blooming town. For the whole orchard was out behind the house, and all the flowering almonds in front of it; the old stone walls rose close pressed in blossoms. Sara opened the door before he had time to knock. "I was watching for you," she said. "Judith Inches and Caleb have gone up the mountain to see their mother, as they always do on Easter afternoon, and they have taken Scar." Owen paused in the hall to greet her; he was very proud of this proud, reserved girl whose love he had won. "Do not wait, Frederick. Mamma has such a pleadingly sorrowful look to-day that I want to have it over." "Only a moment," said Owen. He was standing with his arm round her, holding her close. "Do you remember that afternoon when I spoke to you of your mother, of the sisterly kindness she had shown to that poor woman who had lost her crippled boy? And do you remember that you said that no one save those who were in the house with her all the time could comprehend the one hundredth part of her tenderness, her constant thought for others? Your answer put me in a glow of pleasure, I did not then comprehend why. I asked myself as I walked home if I cared so much to hear Madam Carroll praised. I know now what I cared for--it was because _you_ had said it. For I had been afraid, unconsciously to myself, perhaps, that you did not fully appreciate her, appreciate her as she seemed to me." "And I had not until then. I shall always reproach myself--" "You need not; you have made up for it a hundredfold," answered Owen. Then, coming back to himself, with love's unfailing egotism--"I wonder if you realize all the suffering I went through?" he continued. "You made me wait in my pain so long, so long!"