"WHERE did you spend your summer holiday?" asked Aunt Ruth, in a smiling but significant tone. The fact was, the four children had got into rather a hot dispute one day at tea over a trifling difference of opinion, and Aunt Ruth had interrupted with a quick, bright question, which had made them all turn their eyes towards her. "Why?" asked Tom, answering the tone of the question, rather than the words. "That is what we used to say at home when we wanted to change the subject," said Aunt Ruth. "Did you want to change the subject?" asked Oswald. Then pausing, "Oh, I see," with a conscious laugh. "Well, I suppose it would be as well to talk of something else, as we are never likely to agree over it." "Oh, oh!" said Tom, "That is beginning again! Well—Auntie—as you know very well where we spent our summer holiday, let's hear where you did." "I'm quite willing. Come along to the summer-house, and when I hear the bees humming among the pear blossoms, I shall get taken back in imagination to last year, and shall be able to tell you where I did spend mine." She led the way out of doors, and the children scampered after her, carrying certain camp stools and chairs, which were kept in the passage leading to the garden. Aunt Ruth had caught up her writing case, which Jean wondered at, but when they were settled in their usual places, this was explained by her producing from it a sketch, which she handed round. "This is where I spent my summer holiday," she said lovingly, as if the place were dear to her. "Oh!" said Rose. "That is why you said you must come out near the pear blossoms. I see now. Were there bees there?" "It was an ideal place. I was in urgent need of rest and refreshment and quiet (as you know), and I heard of this little cottage on the borders of the Downs. This clematis-covered porch was my entrance, and the other door was the good woman's. I could go out on the Downs with my camp chair, and sit and look at the sea, and feel the breezes blow round me, or I could bask in the sunshine to my heart's content, sheltered by the cottage from the cold winds." "And the bees?" asked Rose. "Yes, the bees seem to link themselves with the restful thoughts of those days, for when I was near the cottage, with its flowers, their song seemed to tell me over and over again what I think I shall never forget—" "And that was—?" asked Jean, putting her soft hand into her auntie's. All the children knew that Aunt Ruth had had some great trial, but they had never been told what it was. "The lesson I learned in that peaceful time was, 'The Lord God is a sun and shield; the Lord will give grace and glory; no good thing will He withhold from them that walk uprightly.'" "I learned, dears, that God wishes to be to us all a Sun and a Shield. As a Sun, He warms and cheers us with the light of His countenance; as a Shield, He shelters us from that which would hurt us and do us harm."