"I really hope," began Mrs. Cheriton, "that he understands what I have told him, that God sees us, though we can't see Him. Yesterday afternoon we were sitting here with the door open into the next room. I heard a noise like driving a nail, but supposed he was busy with his toys, and presently I heard his voice. We both listened and heard him say,— "'God, don't look this way! Turn your eyes the other side. I'm very naughty, God. Don't see me! Look over there! I'm SO naughty, God, I don't want you to see.'" "By this time I concluded it was best for me to see what the hammering meant. I went in and found him driving tacks into the trunk. He made no resistance when I took away the hammer, but looked ashamed when I said,— "'O Geenie! How could you do so?'" "You can imagine how he would have resisted once," added the boy's grandmother. "He would have kicked and screamed and tried to bite." "I am thankful those days are past," murmured Marion, noticing the mother's flush of painful recollection caused by this allusion. "He will reward you for all the pains you take to control him." "He has already," exclaimed the young mother, clasping her hands in her impulsive manner. "Geenie was never so affectionate as now. I do believe that he never loved me so well as when I had to punish him the other day. He hung around me, kissing me again and again. When he saw tears in my eyes, he took his own little handkerchief to wipe them away, saying repeatedly,— "'Geenie will be good all the time, mamma. Geenie won't make mamma cry any more.'" Marion was sometimes very curious to know whether, with the many obvious changes in Mrs Cheriton's character, her feelings of aversion to her husband remained. She was well aware that many of the former disagreements with the mother arose from the fact that Mrs. Douglass urged Juliette to write kindly to her husband, from whom they had heard within a few months. To be sure, he had not sent them any intelligence, but in a newspaper accidentally falling under their notice, they had seen his name and knew he was then in New Orleans. If there was any return of affection on the wife's part, no one knew it, for on this subject she maintained the most rigid reserve. Indeed, Mrs. Cheriton could never be called a frank person. It was only under the influence of very strong emotion that she gave utterance to her deepest feelings. From the first, Marion had noticed this trait, and wondered at it in one so young. With another child-wife it was exactly the reverse. To her earliest friends—Miss Howard and Hepsey—Esther laid bare all that was in her childish and grateful heart. Marion often came upon her, singing in a low musical voice, a refrain from the hymn sung at family prayers, and when spoken to she had a way of looking up with her large, deep-set eyes, and smiling, as she said softly,—