Such is our existence here upon earth. Our hearts break and they are healed. We weep and we smile. We fail, and are disappointed, and we try once more. Nothing had befallen Margaret that has not befallen thousands. Her fate might have been infinitely worse than it was. She might have been left friendless and homeless. But here she was surrounded by loving hearts; her home was secured to her; all her plans of life were to be carried out; had she any right to mourn? Indeed she had. She had lost one of the most magnanimous friends ever given to mortal woman; she had lost the tenderest heart that was beating upon earth for her; she had lost the inspiration of a holy example. Did she well to mourn? Yes, yes. But she bore her grief nobly, and on the very day on which the dreadful truth was revealed to her she wrote in her "book of mercies:" "I understand, now, how one can be glad to _suffer_ God's will when too weak to _do_ it. What a mercy!" CHAPTER XXVII. Once more the doors of Greylock were opened wide, and children and grandchildren flocked together for the Christmas festival. But it was the last assemblage of the sort. It needed an immense power to call so many, and so widely-scattered households into one; and that power was gone. They loved each other dearly still, but she who held them united was gone; the sacrifice of time, and the thousand discomforts of winter-travel, never thought of during her life, now asserted their rights, and were heard. Now one family dropped off, now another, until at last Laura and her husband and children, with Margaret, held undisputed possession of the house. Yet the strong character of the mother lived still. In every one of the homes this was done, that left undone, to please her. On some of them, it is true, her influence was in the main unconscious, but with most of them she was the constant object of love, study, and imitation. They obeyed her as implicitly as when they were little children, for her laws were those of sound common sense, sanctified by the Word of God and by prayer. Belle wore the mantle of her piety, and her judgment was consulted by them all, in every domestic emergency. Laura went on having Pugs and Trots, whom she never seemed to "manage" at all, but who were delightful creatures; bright, wide-awake, spirited, but in all other points original and dissimilar. She always said she destroyed the pattern by which each child was made, that no other might be made like it, and that if they all had dared to have blue, or all black eyes, she would have put some of them out in order to have variety in the house. But it was enough to her to be a mother, so, though she had one of her quaint babies at all sorts of irregular times, she contrived to bring forth books as well, while developing more and more, not into a second Mrs. Grey, but into a character as pronounced, and as formed to influence her day and generation.