"Once I was a boy like Walter," added Mr. Dermott, "and lived at home with my father and mother. Your mother was younger than you are, and lived nearly a mile distant. By and by, as I grew up, I wanted some young lady, who knew about housekeeping, to come and take care of me. There were a great many young ladies in the town, and a great many more in the city where I was doing business; but somehow I liked your mother the best, and thought, if she would consent to leave her parents, brothers, and sisters, I would purchase a house, and we would have a home of our own." "And did she?" eagerly asked the child, fixing upon her father a pair of bright blue eyes. Mr. Dermott gave his wife a glance of affection; and Helen exclaimed, "Why, yes, we know she did, or else she would not have been here now." "I hope no one will ask me to go away," said Isabelle with a deep sigh. "I should not like to go away from home." "Of course they won't while you are a little girl," remarked Walter in a comforting tone. "I was very glad that she said yes," continued the gentleman; "indeed, I don't know what would have become of me if she had refused, for I could think of no one else, among all my friends, who would do as well." Helen caught her mother's hand, and pressed it enthusiastically to her lips. "Then I went to her father's house," added the gentleman, "and we stood up together and were married, and that was called a wedding. We promised to love and cherish each other as long as we lived. The Bible has rules for persons who live together as we intended to, and we promised to try to live according to them. Now, Walter, can you tell me what relation Adam was to Eve?" "He was her husband." "Where was their wedding?" "In Eden." "Who married them? "God." "There was a great and glorious company present; can you tell me who they were?" "I suppose," replied Mrs. Dermott, "you refer to the angels, as the Bible says,— "'The morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy.'" "Then God entered into a covenant, here called a covenant of life,—perhaps you would call it an agreement,—with the newly married pair, that if they would render perfect obedience to his one command, and not eat of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, they might enjoy all the pleasures of the beautiful garden, and a whole eternity of joy and bliss. But if they disobeyed his command, and ate the forbidden fruit, they would be cast out of the garden, and becoming sinful, would be made miserable forever." "I think it was real mean in them to eat the forbidden fruit," cried Walter, indignantly, "when God had done so much to make them happy." "Yes, my dear, those who commit sin are always guilty of meanness. But is it any less mean and foolish in us to sin than it was in them?" "It seems to me it would have been very easy for them to obey in just one thing," added the boy.