entirely to them at the proper moment, and now entered into their
frolicsome mood as joyously as if I had never known a sorrow or lost
an hour's sleep. At last they went off to their play- room, and Una
settled down by my side to amuse Daisy, when Helen began again.

"I should like to read that letter myself," she said. "Meanwhile I
want to ask you one question. What are you made of that you can turn
from one thing to another like lightning? Talking one moment as if
life depended on your every word, and then frisking about with those
wild boys as if you were a child yourself?"

I saw Una look up curiously, to hear my answer, as I replied,

"I have always aimed at this flexibility. I think a mother,
especially, ought to learn to enter into the gayer moods of her
children at the very moment when her own heart is sad. And it may be
as religious an act for her to romp with them at the time as to pray
with them at another."

Helen now went away to her room with Dr Cabot's letter, which I
silently prayed might bless her as it had blessed me. And then a
jaded, disheartened mood came over me that made me feel that all I
had been saying to her was but as sounding brass and a tinkling
cymbal, since my life and my professions did not correspond. Hitherto
my consciousness of imperfection has made me hesitate to say much to
Helen. Why are we so afraid of those who live under the same roof
with us? It must be the conviction that those who daily see us acting
in a petty, selfish, trifling way, must find it hard to conceive that
our prayers and our desires take a wider and higher aim. Dear little
Helen! May the ice once broken remain broken forever.