“What do you think, Rosie?” laughed Walter.  “Mamma called me her baby boy last night; me—­a great fellow of eleven.  I think you must be her baby girl.”

But Rosie made no reply.  She was gazing earnestly into her mother’s face.  “Mamma dear,” she said anxiously, “you are not well! you are suffering!  Oh, what is it ails you?”

“I am in some pain, daughter,” Elsie answered, in a cheerful tone; “but Cousin Arthur hopes to be able to relieve it in a day or two.”

“Oh, I am glad to hear that!” Rosie exclaimed, with a sigh of relief.  “Dearest mamma, I do not know how I could ever bear to have you very ill.”

“Should that trial ever come to you, daughter dear, look to God for strength to endure it,” her mother said in sweetly solemn accents, as she gently smoothed Rosie’s hair with her soft white hand and gazed lovingly into her eyes.  “Do not be troubled about the future, but trust his gracious promise:  ‘As thy days, so shall thy strength be!’ Many and many a time has it been fulfilled to me and to all who have put their trust in him?”

“Yes, mamma, I know you have had some hard trials, and yet you always seem so happy.”

“You look happy now, mamma; are you?” asked Walter, a little anxiously.

“Yes, my son, I am,” she said, smiling affectionately upon him.  “Now let us have our reading,” turning over the leaves of her Bible as she spoke.  “We will take the twenty-third psalm.  It is short, and so very sweet and comforting.”

They did so, Elsie making a few brief remarks, especially on the fourth verse, which neither Rosie nor Walter ever forgot.

She followed them with a short prayer, and just at its close her father came in, and, sending the children away, spent alone with his daughter the few minutes that remained before the ringing of the breakfast bell.

He obeyed the summons, but she remained in her own apartments, a servant carrying her meal to her.

It was something very unusual for her, and, joined to an unusual silence on the part of their grandfather, accompanied by a sad countenance and occasional heavy sigh, and similar symptoms shown by both Grandma Rose and Edward, excited surprise and apprehension on the part of the younger members of the household.

Family worship, as was the rule followed immediately upon the conclusion of the meal, and Mr. Dinsmore’s feeling petition on behalf of the sick one increased the alarm of Rosie and Zoe.

Both followed Edward out upon the veranda, asking anxiously what ailed mamma.

At first he tried to parry their questions, but his own ill-concealed distress only increased their alarm and rendered them the more persistent.

“There is something serious ailing mamma,” he said at length, “but Cousin Arthur hopes soon to be able to relieve her.  The cure is somewhat doubtful, however, and that is what so distresses grandpa, grandma, and me.  Oh, let us all pray for her, pleading the Master’s precious promise, ’If two of you shall agree on earth as touching anything that they shall ask, it shall be done for them of my Father which is in heaven.’