Maud's room, with its lovely adjoining boudoir, was left for a long time unchanged. Her mother fed the canary and tended the plants she had loved, exactly as if the child had gone on a short journey and was soon to return. One or two books lay open, just as she had left them; and the whole air of the apartments was kept just what it had been, neat and orderly to precision, refined and tasteful to perfection. Mrs. Grey thought she should always keep these two rooms sacred to the memory of the bright, happy maiden who had made them what they were with her own hands; no other head should touch the pillow on which that fair one had once rested; no other eye should linger on the objects of beauty gathered there--the dainty furniture, the pictures and vines on the walls, the quaint hanging-baskets and brackets, and woodland and sea-shore trophies. She could almost hear the tap of the little hammer with which Maud used to go about nailing up this, that, and the other pretty thing she had picked up, or bought, or invented, and her gay song the while. But as time passed, there began to steal over her a vague sentiment, which later became thought; she must keep the rest of the house for the children and grandchildren; but was it right to shut up those beautiful rooms for one who would never return to them? Could not some other young girl come and nestle there, and enjoy what Maud no longer needed? When she first consulted friends on the subject, they all protested against it. Such experiments always proved failures, they said. It would have to be an extraordinary girl to fill Maud's place, etc., etc. "But I never thought of filling Maud's place," she argued. "I was only thinking of the happiness it may be in my power to give." "I should think that among all your grandchildren, one, at least, might be spared," some one suggested. "But even if I were willing to break into a family circle in that way, and I am not, this would not meet my plan. My grandchildren all have happy homes, and need nothing better. But if I should light upon some friendless girl, think how she would enjoy my dear Maud's forsaken nest!" "But you might find her uncongenial, even disagreeable." A sweet, happy smile lighted up Mrs. Grey's face, as she replied: "I should be doing her good, and trying to make her happy. And after all I have gone through, sustained by the Divine hand, ought I to doubt that if He sends me an uncongenial girl, He will give me grace with which to bear with her?" Some said this was faith, and all right. Others said that if people went and thrust their heads into a bear's mouth they must expect them to be bitten off, faith or no faith. Now some years before, Mrs. Grey was feeling her way through the dark hall of a tenement-house in the city of New York, when her steps were arrested by the sound of a girl's voice, crying so bitterly that sympathetic tears rushed from her own eyes.