"Yes; and I will see that your last days are made as comfortable as possible. Leave everything to me. On the day you are to leave your employer's, send Margaret to me. I will tell her what is before her. Poor child! her distress will be dreadful." "Would it be right for us to have no farewell?" "No, no, indeed, you shall have a farewell. Leave everything to me." Mrs. Haydon took leave, and Mrs. Grey rang; her factotum immediately appeared. "Mary, we are going to have some visitors; that is, I want _the_ room prepared for a sick person and a young lady. And Mary--their appearance, when they arrive, is to be a matter between you and me; no one else is to know what sort of clothes they wear. When asked questions in the kitchen, just say they are friends of mine." Mary, discretion itself, withdrew, and in a few days Margaret unsuspectingly made her appearance. Mrs. Grey had a most trying task before her, and expected some such burst of anguish as that of four years ago. But Margaret had passed through much discipline during those four years. To see her mother a kitchen housemaid; to feel herself the yoke of servitude, had been hard, very hard. She did not shed a tear when the truth was told her, and only said, setting her teeth together, "I always have said that if the Lord loved my mother half as well as she loved Him, He'd take her out of a kitchen and find a more suitable place for her." "He loves her, as He does all His children, so much more than any of us love Him, that we have no arithmetical terms with which to describe it. And if a manger and a carpenter's shop were suitable places for Him, what spot is too humble for us?" "_You_ would not like to lie in a manger, or work in a carpenter's shop, or drudge in a kitchen." "No, dear, I do not pretend that I should; but I hope I should act, under the same circumstances, as your mother has done. I think she did the best she could for you. And now she has toiled in an uncongenial sphere long enough, and her Master has by His providence told her so." "But what will become of her? Sick people need homes. We have laid by some money, but you know mother's wages were very small because she had an incumbrance. Yes, that's all I am in this world, an _incumbrance_!" "It will not be so in the next world. But here is the question, as to where your mother is to spend her last months. She has decided to go to a hospital." "Poor mother! But I will not let them neglect her. I will take care of her day and night." "My dear, you will not be allowed to do that. An occasional visit is all that is permitted." "An occasional visit to my sick mother!" cried Margaret; "I should like to see them undertake to separate us! I would tear them to pieces first!" Mrs. Grey remained silent, and Margaret ran furiously on till the silence struck and checked her.