"Are you not growing rather large and heavy for that?" the mother asked with a slight smile, as Kenneth good-humoredly complied with the request. "I'll be bigger and heavier before he has another chance," remarked the child, putting an arm about Kenneth's neck and gazing wistfully into his eyes. "But not too big, never too big, to take your seat here," he responded, drawing her closer. "Ah, there will be many a lonely hour when I shall long for my little sister, long to feel her weight upon my knee, her arm about my neck, just as I feel them now." "Why do you all talk so much?" queried the older man sharply, speaking for the first time since Kenneth's entrance, and turning somewhat angrily toward the little group. "You leave me no peace of my life with your incessant gabble, gabble." With the last word he rose and withdrew to an inner room. No one answered or tried to detain him: the shade of sadness deepened slightly on the mother's calm face, and Marian's arm tightened its hold on Kenneth's neck, but no one spoke and the room was very still for a moment. Then the mother, glancing at the dial-plate of a tall old-fashioned clock, ticking in a corner, said, "Marian, my child, it is growing late, and you will want to be up betimes in the morning." The little girl, heaving a sigh, reluctantly bade them good-night and retired. Kenneth looked after her. "What a sweet creature she is! what a lovely woman a few years will make of her," he said; but catching the expression of the mother's countenance, he ended abruptly, with almost a groan. She had dropped her knitting in her lap, her face had grown very pale, her lips quivered, and there was a look of anguish in her eyes. Kenneth longed to comfort her, but could find no words. He brought a glass of water and held it to her lips. She swallowed a mouthful, and as he set the glass down on a stand by her side, took up her work again with a slight sigh. The spasm of pain seemed to have passed, and her face resumed its accustomed expression of patient endurance. He stood gazing down on her, his eyes full of a wistful tenderness. "Mother," he said, bending over her and speaking in a voice scarce raised above a whisper, "our God is very good, very merciful, surely He will hear our united prayers that it--that fearful curse--may never light on her." "His will be done with me and mine," she answered low and tremulously. "Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him." He turned and paced the room for several minutes, then came back to her side. "And I--am I right to go and leave you thus?--alone--unprotected, if--" She looked up with a great courage in her noble face. "Yes, go, Kenneth; I do not fear, and it is best for you and for him. You forget how fully we have both been convinced of that." "How brave you are, how strong in faith!" he cried admiringly.