“If not in Highland, in New York.  Leave that to me.”

Mrs. Wainwright felt as if she had been taking a tonic.  To the lady living her days out in her own chamber, and unaccustomed to excitement, there was something very surprising and very stimulating too in the swift way of settling things and the fearlessness of this young girl.  Though she had yielded very reluctantly to her brother’s wish to keep Grace apart from her family and wholly his own for so many years, she now saw there was good in it.  Her little girl had developed into a resolute, capable and strong sort of young woman, who could make use of whatever tools her education had put into her hands.

“This hasn’t been quite the right kind of Sunday talk, mother,” said Grace, “but I haven’t been here three days without seeing there’s a cloud, and I don’t like to give up to clouds.  I’m like the old woman who must take her broom and sweep the cobwebs out of the sky.”

“God helping you, my dear, you will succeed.  You have swept some cobwebs out of my sky already.”

“God helping me, yes, dear.  Thank you for saying that.  Now don’t you want me to sing to you?  I’ll darken your room and set the door ajar, and then I’ll go to the parlor and play soft, rippling, silvery things, and sing to you, and you will fall asleep while I’m singing, and have a lovely nap before they all come home.”

As Grace went down the stairs, she paused a moment at the door of the big dining-room, “large as a town hall,” her father sometimes said.  Everything at Wishing-Brae was of ample size—­great rooms, lofty ceilings, big fire-places, broad windows.

“I missed the sideboard, the splendid old mahogany piece with its deep winy lustre, and the curious carved work.  Mother must have grieved to part with it.  Surely uncle and aunt couldn’t have known of these straits.  Well, I’m at home now, and they need somebody to manage for them.  Uncle always said I had a business head.  God helping me, I’ll pull my people out of the slough of despond.”

The young girl went into the parlor, where the amber light from the west was beginning to fall upon the old Wainwright portraits, the candelabra with their prisms pendent, and the faded cushions and rugs.  Playing softly, as she had said, singing sweetly “Abide with me” and “Sun of my soul,” the mother was soothed into a peaceful little half-hour of sleep, in which she dreamed that God had sent her an angel guest, whose name was Grace.

CHAPTER IV.

TWO LITTLE SCHOOLMARMS.

“And so you are your papa’s good fairy?  How happy you must be!  How proud!” Amy’s eyes shone as she talked to Grace, and smoothed down a fold of the pretty white alpaca gown which set off her friend’s dainty beauty.  The girls were in my mother’s room at the Manse, and Mrs. Raeburn had left them together to talk over plans, while she went to the parlor to entertain a visitor who was engaged in getting up an autumn fete for a charitable purpose.  Nothing of this kind was ever done without mother’s aid.