"Oh, how I envy you, Bessie!" sighed Christine, "you can talk and think happily about our dear little Hatty, but with me it is all so different. If I had only been good to her, if she had not made me so impatient But I cannot help remembering how horrid I used to be." And here one tear after another rolled down Christine's pretty, troubled face. Bessie's soft heart grew very pitiful. "Dear Chrissy," she said gently, "there is no need to fret over that now. Hatty was always fond of you, and you of her; she told me that night, when I came home, how kind you had been to her. There was no one but you to do things, and you were such a comfort to her." "How could I help being kind to her, when she was so ill, and there was the fear of losing her? Somehow, I never thought there was much amiss with Hatty. I could not get it out of my mind that she always made the most of every little ailment, and that it was wrong of you and mother to give in to her. I never thought it would come to this." And Christine sobbed afresh. "Yes, I know what you mean; but, indeed, Chrissy, dear, you need not distress yourself so. Hatty forgave everything long ago; she was never one to bear malice--no, her nature was too sweet for that." "But I might have made her happier," persisted Christine. "I need not have minded her worrying so over every little trifle, but I was always losing patience, and getting vexed with her. I used to wonder at your bearing with her as you did, and I thought it a mistake to give way to all her humors. I never imagined that she was cross because she was suffering, but father says all her gloomy fancies and tiresome little ways came from her bad health." "I might have made her happier!" That speech went to Bessie's heart. "Listen to me, darling," she said eagerly; "think rather of how, by your waywardness, you have wounded the loving heart of Jesus, and sinned against Him. Let the sense of Hatty's loss send you to him in penitence for pardon. Nothing can now undo the past; but you can set yourself in the grace and strength which Jesus gives to do all in your power to make the lives of those around you happier. I do not want to make you more miserable, but what you have just said reminds me so of a passage I copied only the other day out of one of Tom's books; it was written by a man who failed in his own life, but was very gentle and very tolerant of other people. 'Oh, let us not wait,' he says, 'to be just, or pitiful, or demonstrative toward those we love, until they or we are struck down by illness, or threatened with death. Life is short, and we have never too much time for gladdening the hearts of those who are travelling the dark journey with us. Oh, be swift to love, make haste to be kind!' And then in another place he says, and that is so true, too, 'Never to tire, never to grow cold; to be patient, sympathetic, tender; to look for the budding flower and the opening heart, to hope always like God; to love always--this is duty.'"