“Oh, I cannot! I cannot, Mrs. Houston! You are my mother’s friend, and I love you very dearly; but I cannot give you her dear title. I had but one mother in this world--in all eternity we can have but one; to call another person so, however near and dear, would be vain and false; excuse me, Mrs. Houston,” said the girl, gravely. “As you please then, dear. You will get over these morbid feelings. Good-night, God bless you,” said Mrs. Houston, stooping and pressing a kiss upon the brow of her adopted daughter. When every one else was gone, the old doctor lingered near Margaret. “Will you come now, my child?” he asked, gently. “Presently, dear doctor. Please go and leave me here a little while alone with her.” “If I do, will you come in before the dew begins to fall?” “Yes, indeed I will.” The doctor walked away through the woods in the direction of the house. Let us also leave the orphan to her sacred grief, nor inquire whether she spent the next hour in weeping or in prayer. The doctor kept on to the house and told his daughter Clare to prepare the best bedchamber for the accommodation of her friend Margaret. And before the dew fell, true to her promise, Margaret came in. Clare took charge of her. If ever there existed a perfectly sound mind in a perfectly sound body, that body and mind was Clare Hartley’s. She was “a queen of noble nature’s crowning.” She was a fine, tall, well-developed girl, with a fresh and ruddy complexion, hair as black as the black eagle’s crest, and eyes as bright and strong as his glance when sailing toward the sun; with a cheerful smile, and a pleasant, elastic voice. She took charge of Margaret, and in her wise, strong, loving way, ministered to all her needs--knowing when to speak to her, and better still, when to be silent--when to wait upon her, and best of all, when to leave her alone. And Margaret was by her own desire very much left alone. Every morning she stole from the house, and went down through the woods to sit beside her mother’s grave. For the first few days, the hours passed there were spent in inconsolable grief. Then after a week she would sit there quietly, tearlessly, in pensive thought. In the second week of her stay, Mrs. Houston came and brought her clothing from the island, and with it a large packet of linen cut out and partly sewed. This was a set of shirts that Margaret and her mother had been making up for her father the very day that Mrs. Helmstedt had been struck with her death sickness. “I thought that if she could be interested in any of her former occupations, her spirits might sooner rally,” said Mrs. Houston to Clare. And afterward, in delivering the parcel to Margaret, she said: “You know, your father will be home soon, my dear, and will want these to take back to camp with him. Will you not try to finish them all in time?”