“Oh, no, I’d like it so much,” and bringing her own little Bible to Anna’s bedside, Adah read her favorite chapter, the one which had comforted her so often when life was at its darkest. And Anna, listening to the sweet, silvery tones reading, “Let not your heart be troubled,” felt her own sorrow grow less, while there went silently up a prayer of thanksgiving to heaven who had sent her such a comfort as Adah Hastings. The chapter was ended, the little Testament closed, and then for a moment Adah sat as if waiting for Anna to speak. But Anna continued silent, her thoughts intent upon those mansions her elder brother had gone home before her to prepare. “If you please,” Adah said timidly, bending over the sweet face resting on the pillow, “if you please, may I say the Lord’s Prayer here with you? I shall sleep better for it. I used to say it with——” She stopped suddenly ere the loved name of _Alice_ had passed her lips, but Anna was kindly unconscious of the almost mistake, and only answered by grasping Adah’s hand, and whispering to her, “Yes, say it, do.” Then Adah knelt beside her, and Anna’s fair hand rested, as if in blessing, on her head, as they said together, “Our Father.” It was a lovely sight, those two girls as it were, the one mistress, the other the maid, yet both forgetting the inequality in that expression of a common faith which made them truly equals; and Eudora, awed at the sight paused a moment on the threshold, and then moved silently away, lest they should know she had been there. At first Adah’s position at Terrace Hill was a very trying one, but Anna’s unfailing kindness and thoughtfulness shielded her from much that was unpleasant, while the fact that Willie was finding favor in the eyes of those who had considered him an intruder, helped to make her burden easy. Accustomed to the free range of Spring Bank, Willie asserted the same right at Terrace Hill, going where he pleased, and putting himself so often in Mrs. Richards way, that she began at last to notice him, and if no one was near, to caress the handsome boy. Asenath and Eudora held out longer, but even they were not proof against Willie’s winning ways. His innocent prattle, and the patter of his little feet, heard from day dawn till night, thawed the ice from their hearts, until Asenath, the softer of the two, was once caught by Adah in the very undignified act of playing she was coach horse, while Willie’s whip, given to him by Anna, was snapped in close proximity to her ears; Eudora, too, no longer hid her worsted stool, and as the weeks went on, there gradually came to be prints of little, soiled, dirty fingers—on the sideboard in the dining room, on the hat-stand in the hall, on the table in the parlor, and even on the dressing bureau in Madame’s bed chamber, where the busy, active child had forced an entrance. It was some weeks ere Adah wrote to Alice Johnson, and when at last she did, she said of Terrace Hill,