This poor, crippled girl, who had known no happy childhood, who had never been able to participate in its sports, who had always been confined to the narrow precincts of a home destitute of all the luxuries of life, who had been daily accustomed to pain and privation, had yet found the true secret of happiness. It lay like moonlight on her countenance. She had that within which many of the rich and wise and great, who look at will on the glorious scenery of earth, who command the treasures of literature and art, who surround themselves with all the comforts and appliances of a home of elegant sufficiency, fail to gain—calm peace in her heart, perfect contentment with her lot, and a spring of never-failing happiness. Nor is she useless in the world, though she has no worldly means to give, nor hands or feet to do her bidding. The light of her holy example, her patience, meekness, resignation, and faith, are treasures to the Church. Every Wednesday there is a prayer-meeting in her room, of which she takes the charge, as she can be always present, and the beauty and propriety with which she speaks of divine things make her words very profitable. In the afternoon Mrs. Lester and Norman went to the prayer-meeting. At the close of the service Mrs. Day, to whom Mrs. Clayton had introduced her in the morning, came up and asked her to go home by the way of her house, as she wished to gather some flowers for her. The large garden, filled with flowers and shrubbery, blooming most luxuriantly in that fertile soil, looked cool and inviting. Mrs. Day handed Norman some flowers as the beginning of his bouquet, and told him to go and pick what he liked. Pink and white spireces, double China pinks, a few lingering June roses, the pretty bee larkspur, the coreopsis, candytuft, and verbenas, were gathered in profusion by Mrs. Day’s lavish hand, and arranged in two bouquets for Mrs. Clayton and Mrs. Lester. “Four years ago,” said she, “this garden was a bare field. I never was so discouraged in coming to any new place.” “You certainly have transformed it into a very pleasant home,” replied Mrs. Lester. “Taste and cultivation, with such a soil as this, can soon work wonders. You can truly sit under your own vine and fig-tree,” continued she, pointing to a beautiful grape-vine that had crept up a lattice, and inclosed with its graceful green curtain a verandah in the rear of the house. “Yes,” said she, “I planted that vine myself, and it is a daily rejoicing to me, and a sermon too. It reminds me continually of that true Vine from which we must draw all our life and sustenance.” “It is well,” said Mrs. Lester, “to have divine truths thus brought to our minds by the objects that surround us.” “My prairie home,” said Mrs. Day, “was really beautiful; that was quite to my mind; a nice house shaded with trees, adorned with shrubbery and flowers, and looking upon broad fertile fields.” “Why did you leave so pretty a home?” asked Mrs. Lester.