One brief year sped rapidly away, and winter again returned with his winds.  It was a wild night, the wintry winds howled fiercely round the dwelling, and pelted the snow and sleet furiously against the casement, when Mrs. Barlow, after attending to those duties that make a New England home so comfortable, dropped her crimson curtains, and seating herself by a comfortable coal fire, commenced preparing her little Emma for bed.

“Oh,” said she, “how the wind blows, mamma; what do poor little children do that have no home?”

Said her mother, “God tempers the wind, my dear, to the shorn lamb.”

“Mamma, do you know I am going to have a party and go to heaven and invite my angel cousin?”

“Are you, indeed.”

“But mamma, it is time to say our Father now,” and the happy mother listened to her dear child as she clasped her hands and lisped the Lord’s prayer, and the appropriate “now I lay me,” after which she soon dropped into a peaceful slumber.

Thus evening was spent after evening with the mother and her dear child, happy in each other’s love.

Winter passed, and genial spring came forth in infantile beauty, unbending the streamlets from their icy fetters, and swelling the buds upon the trees, thus making her early preparation for future beauty and usefulness.

Emma awoke early one Sabbath morning, and leaving her little crib, nestled down beside her mother.  After laying quiet some time, she asked suddenly,

“Is it Sunday, mamma?”

Being answered in the affirmative, she said,

“It would be a beautiful day to die.  Less die to-day, papa, mamma, and Emma, and go to heaven, and get our golden harps; you have a great one, you and papa, and Emma will have a little one like my little angel cousin.”

A shade of sadness passed over the mother’s face, but rested not upon it.  The form of her darling child was in her arms, her downy cheek resting against her own, and the bright blue eyes gazing earnestly into hers with a volume of meaning in their azure depths.

“But you must get up now, for it is a beautiful Sabbath day, and we shall go to meeting to-day, and the minister will pray for us to God.  O how glad I am,” and the dear child clapped her dimpled hands with delight.

And so they went to church Sabbath after Sabbath, while Emma ever seemed to enjoy the services, often making observations upon what she heard.  She inquired every day if it were Sunday; and Saturday evenings her play things were all carefully laid aside, and she expressed great sympathy for poor little children that played upon that day.

The story of the cross would affect her to tears, and yet she loved to dwell upon it, and it was with great effort her attention could be withdrawn from it.

One rosy twilight hour, when the departed beams of the sun still lingered, tinging the curtains of the west with those bright and gorgeous hues that so frequently surround him at his setting.  Emma and her mother sat down to spend that happy hour together, and gaze upon the scene.