Alice stooped and kissed the sweet face. “I knew your mother, my dear, and I will come to see you soon, and tell you about Christmas. It is a beautiful story.” Dr. and Mrs. Richards drove home very silently. It was not often that they had the pleasure of an hour’s shopping together, and yet this expedition in preparation for Christmas had had its own bitterness. It had been seven years since Frederick Richards asked Alice Randolph to share a future which his pessimism forbade him to gild with hope; seven years since she had announced her choice of misery with rather than happiness without him. Which had she found? There had been love in her lot, plenty of it; and, though not wealth, yet no touch of “poortith cauld.” Yet the silence between them was a sad silence; and once Alice laid her hand on his arm, and said, half below her breath,— “Fred, tell me, how do you bear your life, not believing, or trying to believe, that God knows best, and orders all for our good?” “Do you believe that, Alice?” he asked. “I try,” she said; “oh! indeed I try hard.” “That’s right,” he said gently; “it is the best comfort you can find.” “But it does seem unjust,” she said. “Look at that little Louis, so strong and active, and then think of”— “Well, well,” he answered, “Freddy has his own pleasures. I don’t know a happier boy.” “That is true,” she said, with a smile through her tears; “he is very happy!” and then she sank again into her own thoughts, and forgot to notice that her question remained unanswered. In a few moments they stopped at their own door; and Alice, flying upstairs to what was still called the nursery, was greeted by a rapturous shout, and clasped by two little arms that seemed as if they would never unclose to let her go again. And Alice, sitting on the floor while she removed her bonnet, had no mist of tears to dim her brown eyes, which were so much like Freddy’s own; she was the bright, merry playfellow, full of life and fun, and brimming over with wonderful and delightful songs and stories of all descriptions. Dr. Richards, too, brought only sunshine into Freddy’s nursery; he took off his pessimism with his overcoat, or left it bottled in alcohol on a shelf in his office; so there was really little wonder that Freddy was happy.