Draxy's. "I guess he's got sense enough to know that she's got more real
book-learnin' in her head than he has, twice over. I shouldn't wonder if
she got to writin' some of his sermons for him out'n out, before long."

Dear Draxy's reverent wifehood would have been grieved and dismayed if she
had known that her efforts to second her husband's appeals to his people
were sometimes so eloquent as to make the Elder's words forgotten. But she
never dreamed of such a thing; she was too simple hearted and humble.

In the early days of the second winter came the Angel of the Annunciation,
bearing a white lily to Draxy. Her joy and gratitude were unspeakable, and
the exquisite purity and elevation of her nature shone out transcendent in
the new experience.

"Now I begin to feel surer that God really trusts me," she said, "since he
is going to let me have a child of my own."

"O my dear friends!" she exclaimed more than once to mothers, "I never
dreamed how happy you were. I thought I knew, but I did not."

Draxy's spontaneous and unreserved joy of motherhood, while yet her babe
was unborn, was a novel and startling thing to the women among whom she
lived. The false notions on this point, grown out of ignorant and base
thoughts, are too wide-spread, too firm-rooted, to be overthrown in an
hour or a day, even by the presence of angelic truth incarnate. Some of
Draxy's best friends were annoyed and disquieted by her frankness and
unreserve of delight. But as the weeks went on, the true instinct of
complete motherhood thrilled for the first time in many a mother's heart,
under Draxy's glowing words, and women talked tearfully one with another,
in secret, with lowered voices, about the new revelation which had come to