"No, my dears. She often intended to do so, but she did not live many years after her husband's death. She lived to see my mother happily married to my good father and then she died. I think the world seemed a strange place to her without her Pierre. She spoke of the manuscript not long before her death. `After all,' she said, `no words of mine could have done justice to his goodness. Teach your children to honour the memory of their grandfather, and to know that a long line of ancestry is not the only thing to be proud of.'" "But mother," said Pierre Marceau, half-timidly, "if one's ancestors have been _good_ people?" "Ah yes, my boy. In such case be not so much proud of them as grateful to the good God for having come of such a stock, be they noblemen or farmers, high in the world's esteem, or working with their hands for their daily bread," said Farmer Marceau, as he rose from the arm-chair where he had been sitting to listen to his wife's reading. "And the Valmonts _were_ good," whispered Pierre to his sister Edmee; "so we _may_ be a little proud of them, you see, after all." But when he went to say good-night to Madame Marceau, he added gently, "You are right, dear little mother. I _am_ very glad that you called me Pierre, after my good great-grandfather, Pierre Germain--" My readers may be sure that from the time of the reading of the manuscript, the little old portrait was dusted with even greater care than before, and that on holidays and fete days it was decorated with wreaths of the loveliest flowers to be found in all the country-side. And there, I hope, in the best room of the old farmhouse, it will smile down for many and many, a day on the dwellers therein, reminding them that riches and greatness are not the best or most enduring possessions, that sorrows come alike to all, that trust in God and reverence for His laws are the only sure pilots through this life--that faithful, unselfish love is the most beautiful thing on earth, and, may we not say, in Heaven also? End of Project Gutenberg's The Little Old Portrait, by Mrs Molesworth