“Good gracious me, my dear, there’s such a mess in the kitchen! Katy’s burnt up the pudding, put castor-oil instead of olive in the salad, smashed the best meat-dish, and here’s Mr. Gage come to dinner,” cried Mrs. Dean in accents of despair as she tied up her head in a fourth shawl. “Oh, I’m so glad; I’ll go in and see him a few minutes, and then I’ll come and attend to everything; so don’t worry, mother.” “How did you find me out?” asked Psyche as she shook hands with her guest and stood looking up at him with all the old confiding frankness in her face and manner. “The violets showed me the way.” She glanced at the posy in his button-hole and smiled. “Yes, I gave them to Adam, but I didn’t think you would guess. I enjoyed your work for an hour to-day, and I have no words strong enough to express my admiration.” “There is no need of any. Tell me about yourself; what have you been doing all this year?” he asked, watching with genuine satisfaction the serene and sunny face before him, for discontent, anxiety, and sadness were no longer visible there. “I’ve been working and waiting,” she began. “And succeeding, if I may believe what I see and hear and read,” he said, with an expressive little wave of the book as he laid it down before her. “My diary! I didn’t know I had lost it. Where did you find it?” “By the brook where I stopped to rest. The moment I saw your name I shut it up. Forgive me, but I can’t ask pardon for reading a few pages of that little gospel of patience, love, and self-denial.” She gave him a reproachful look, and hurried the tell-tale book out of sight as she said, with a momentary shadow on her face,— “It has been a hard task; but I think I have learned it, and am just beginning to find that my dream _is_ ‘a noonday light and truth,’ to me.” “Then you do not relinquish your hopes, and lay down your tools?” he asked, with some eagerness. “Never! I thought at first that I could not serve two masters, but in trying to be faithful to one I find I am nearer and dearer to the other. My cares and duties are growing lighter every day (or I have learned to bear them better), and when my leisure does come I shall know how to use it, for my head is full of ambitious plans, and I feel that I can do something _now_.” All the old enthusiasm shone in her eyes, and a sense of power betrayed itself in voice and gesture as she spoke. “I believe it,” he said heartily. “You have learned the secret, as that proves.” Psyche looked at the childish image as he pointed to it, and into her face there came a motherly expression that made it very sweet. “That little sister was so dear to me I could not fail to make her lovely, for I put my heart into my work. The year has gone, but I don’t regret it, though this is all I have done.” “You forget your three wishes; I think the year has granted them.” “What were they?” “To possess beauty in yourself, the power of seeing it in all things, and the art of reproducing it with truth.”