And then they sat down very close together and the things they said to each other are lost to the world, because we joined the nurse in the next room and shut the door. XXI It happened that the anniversary of Doctor and Mrs. Guthrie's wedding day,--they had been married twenty-eight years,--fell on a Sunday that year. The night before, at dinner, the little mother, thankful and happy at having Peter back again at the table, asked a favour. In having to ask it, instead of simply saying that she desired her children to go with her to church the next morning, she proved her knowledge of the fact that she had joined the ranks of mothers whose children have outgrown them. Mrs. Guthrie was, however, one of those rather rare women who had grown old gracefully. The hand of time, whose natural treatment she had made no sort of endeavor to combat, had added to her beauty. Optimism, a steady faith in God and His goodness, and the usual gift of accepting whatever came to her without kicking against the pricks, had mellowed her. It was without any of the spirit of martyrdom that cakes the nature of those women who have not been able to acquire the best sort of philosophy that she frankly made this very natural and easily fulfilled desire a favour. Peter was well again and she wanted to kneel before the altar of the Great Father and give thanks, surrounded by her children, on the anniversary of the day that made her a wife. The family had grown out of the habit of going to church,--Belle was tired, as a rule, after a late Saturday night, Graham was an inveterate week-ender, Ethel was a modernist, and Peter played golf,--and so, when they all agreed without any argument the little mother was almost as surprised as she was delighted. The conspiracy of silence which the family had tacitly agreed upon during their recent trouble, in order to spare her from unhappiness, left Mrs. Guthrie wholly without any knowledge of the fact that they were all glad of an excuse to join her in church, because they all felt a curious eagerness to listen to the simple, beautiful service with which they had grown up and to kneel once more--more humbly and sincerely than ever before--in the house of the God who had been instrumental in their various escapes.