'But ladies don't light fires,' said Minna, in open-eyed perplexity.

'Oh,' exclaimed the younger sister, 'you know Henry said he did not
think any of the Miss Mays were first-rate, and that our Ave beat
them all to nothing.'

The elder, Minna, began hushing; and it must be confessed that honest
Mary was not superior to a certain crimson flush of indignation, as
she held her head into the grate, and thought of Ethel, Flora, and
Blanche, criticized by Mr. Henry Ward. Little ungrateful chit! No,
it was not a matter of laughing, but of forgiveness; and the
assertion of the dignity of usefulness was speedily forgotten in the
toilette of the small light skin-and-bone frames, in the course of
which she received sundry compliments--'her hands were so nice and
soft,' 'she did not pull their hair like their own Mary,' 'they
wished she always dressed them.'

The trying moment was when they asked if they might kneel at her lap
for their prayers. To Mary, the twelve years seemed as nothing since
her first prayers after the day of terror and bereavement, and her
eyes swam with tears as the younger girl unthinkingly rehearsed her
wonted formula, and the elder, clinging to her, whispered gravely,
'Please, what shall I say?'

With full heart, and voice almost unmanageable, Mary prompted the few
simple words that had come to her in that hour of sorrow. She looked
up, from stooping to the child's ear, to see her father at the door,
gazing at them with face greatly moved. The children greeted him
fondly, and he sat down with one on each knee, and caressed them as