But Martha still works at her “opening.” This, the last which they are ever to do, Harry says, is a collar very elaborately embroidered, which Martha resolves shall be bestowed on Agnes, as one memorial of those toilsome days when they are past. The sterner lines in Martha’s face have relaxed, and her eyelids droop softly with a grateful pleasant weariness over her subdued eyes. Sometimes the curves about her mouth move with a momentary quiver, as though a few tears were about to fall; but the tears never fall. And sometimes she lays down her work on her knee, and droops her head forward, and looks up under her eyelashes with a smile at the young mother, or at the two household flowers. These are long, loving, lingering glances, not bright but dim with the unusual gentleness of this unusual rest. The sounds without do not strike upon your ear harshly, as sounds do in winter, for this April day is warm and genial, like a day in June, and has in it a natural hush and calm, which softens every distant voice. Chief of all passing voices come gaily through the sunshine and the open window, the song of Maggie McGillivray. She is sitting again on her mother’s step, with the full sunshine, which she does not at all heed, streaming upon her brown, wholesome, comely face. Her scissors flash in the sun, her yellow hair burns; but Maggie only throws over her head the finished end of her web, and clips and sings with unfailing cheerfulness. This time it is not the “Lea Rig,” but “Kelvin Grove,” to which the shears march and keep time; but it is impossible to tell what a zest it gives to idleness, when one can look out upon industry so sunshiny and alert as this. “Perfunctory--p, e, r, f, u, n, c, t--Eh! Rose, yonder’s Postie, with a letter,” cried Violet, out of breath. “It’s sure to be from Harry, he’s always so thoughtful,” said the young wife; “run and get it, Violet. I wonder if he has seen the house yet--I wonder if he has settled when we’re all to go--I wonder--but to think of him writing again to-day! Poor Harry! he would think we would be anxious, Martha.” “Here’s three; everybody but me gets a letter,” cried Violet, entering with her hands full. “Martha, Postie says this should have come yesterday, but it had no number; and here’s one from my uncle. May _I_ open Uncle Sandy’s letter, Martha?” But Violet’s question was not answered. Harry’s letter was a large one, a family epistle addressed to Martha, enclosed within the love-letter which Harry’s still fresh and delicate affection sent to his wife. But while Agnes ran over her’s alone, a flush of delight and expectation making her smile radiant, Rose looking over Martha’s shoulder, and Violet standing at her knee, possessed themselves of the contents of the larger letter; so that Agnes, roused at the end of her own to kindred eagerness about this, started up to join them, as Rose exclaimed: “A boat on the water,” and Violet cried “Eh, Agnes, a wee burn,” in the same breath.