I looked about me at all the familiar things: the pictures--especially a crayon portrait of my father--the mottos, wrought in colored yam. Wisdom was more available than art those days in the north country, and the walls of many a simple home were decorated with the sayings of bard or prophet, each neatly framed. My mother's mottos were all her own, however. She was a daughter of the pioneers who had learned much in a hard school of experience. The best of it all had come down to her, and was a bit refined by her own thought. There was a kind of history in those mottos that hung on the walls of the Mill House--the heart history of men who had had to think for themselves. I read them anew and thoughtfully:= ```The kindly will never want a friend; ```The mean will never lack an enemy.= ```One good word deserves another, ```But receives more than it deserves.= ```To-day is the best of all days, ```But to-morrow will be better.= ```Let heaven begin here.= After all my regretful thinking on that journey, which had now come to its end, these words began to fill with meaning. That last injunction, printed in golden threads, sank deeply into my heart and led to this conviction: that the Mill House was one of the outlying provinces of heaven; far removed, maybe, but still as much a part of it as those isles ten thousand miles from London are a part of the British Empire. Breakfast being ready, I went down after my good friends. The Pearl would not come in. “Just hand me a little snack,” said he; “I ain't fit to go in.” He would not yield to urging, and so I brought his breakfast to him, and he sat down and ate at the foot of the stairway. My mother and sister sat at the table with Mr. McCarthy and me. The manners of the handmade gentleman became exceedingly formal. He spoke only when spoken to, save when he said: “May I be so bold as to ask for a glass of water?” When I suggested the subject of Sal, he began to relax, and went to his grip and gravely presented my mother with a dozen balls of it. The breakfast over, my mother went below-stairs with me to thank Mr. Pearl for his kindness, but he was gone. I found her looking up the river, where he was going out of sight, far up the shaded avenue of water, in his canoe. She looked very sad as I walked to the garden with her. “Come, let us look at the flowers,” she said, as she put her arm-about me. “These roses have just opened this morning; they have been waiting for you, and so has this letter.” My heart quickened, for I had seen the postmark and the girlish penmanship on the envelope, and had caught its odor of violets. Eagerly I broke the seal, and read as follows: