"Not unless the Lord lets him come," said the mother. "Oh! no good will come to us except by him. '_Unless the Lord build the house, they labor in vain that build it: unless the Lord keep the city, he watcheth in vain that keepeth it._'" "I don't think you have much to thank him for," remarked the child quietly. "I will thank him!" the woman cried out in a passion. "I will trust him! He is all the hope I have!" "Well, well, you may!" Edith said soothingly. "Don't let's talk about it any more. Give me the scissors, and I'll cut the fraggles off the hem of your gown. Suppose Dick should come home all of a sudden, and find us looking so! I hope he will let us know, don't you? so that we can put our best clothes on." The best clothes in question were a black bombazine gown and shawl, and an old-fashioned crape bonnet and veil, all sewed up and hidden away under Edith's bed in the little dark attic, lest Mr. Rowan, in one of his drunken frenzies, should destroy them. These articles were the mourning which Mrs. Rowan had worn seven years before, when her last daughter died. With them was another bag, belonging to Edith, equally precious to its owner, but from other reasons. There was a scarlet merino cape, lined with silk of the same color, both a little faded, and a faded crape scarf that had once been gorgeous with red and gold. In the innermost fold of this scarf, wrapped in tissue-paper, and tucked inside an old kid glove of remarkable smallness, were two locks of hair--one a short, thick wave of yellow-brown, the other a long, serpentine tress of ebony blackness. While they talked, the door of the room opened, and Mr. Rowan looked in. "Aren't we going to have any supper to-night?" he demanded. Edith fixed a look on him that made him shrink out, and bang the door behind him. His wife started up, glanced at the clock, and went about her work. "Let me help you, Mrs. Jane," the child said. "No, dear. There isn't much to do, and I'd rather do it." Mrs. Rowan's voice had a sepulchral sound, her head being deep in the fireplace, where she was putting one hook into another on the crane, to let the tea-kettle down. She emerged with a smooch of soot on her hair and forehead, and began flying round bringing a table into the middle of the floor, putting up the leaves, spreading the cloth, taking down the dishes, all with trembling haste. "If you want to knit a few times across the heel of that stocking, you may. But be careful not to knit too tightly, as you almost always do. You can begin to narrow when it's two of your forefingers long."