In the other side of the house were also two very thankful and contented hearts.  Reuben and Jane were old people now:  Reuben’s hair was snowy white, and Jane was sadly bent; but the comfort and peace which had come so late into their lives had still come early enough to make the sunset a bright one.  It was a sight to do all hearts good to see the two sitting together on the piazza of the house, in the warm afternoons, and gazing in delight at the eastern mountain ranges turning rose-pink, and then fading through shades of purple to dark gray.

“It’s a good deal like our life, ma,” Reuben said sometimes; “our sun’s pretty low—­most down, I reckon; it’s all rosy-light, just these days; but we shall have to lie down in the shadow presently; but it’s all beautiful, beautiful.”

Jane did not understand him.  She never did.  But she loved the sound of his voice best when he said the things which were too subtle for her.

The two households lived separately as before.  The Elder had proposed their making one family, and Reuben had wistfully seconded it.  But Draxy had firmly said “No.”

“I shall be able to do more for you, father dear, if we do not.  It will not seem so at first, but I know I am right,” she said, and it was a rare wisdom in her sweet soul which led to the decision.  At first it was very hard for Reuben to bear, but as the months went on he saw that it was best.

Draxy’s loving, thoughtful care of them never relaxed.  The excellent woman whom she had secured for their servant went for her orders quite as often to Draxy as to Jane; very few meals were set out for them to which Draxy’s hand had not given the last final touch.  She flitted back and forth between the two homes, equally of both the guardian angel; but the line of division and separation was just as distinctly drawn as if they had been under different roofs a mile apart.  Two or three times in the week they dined and took tea together, but the habit never was formed of doing this on a special day.  When Reuben said, “Couldn’t ye arrange it so’s always to eat your Sunday dinner with us, Draxy?” she replied: 

“Sometimes Sunday dinner; sometimes Thursday; sometimes Saturday, father dear.  If we make it a fixed day, we shall not like it half so well; any of us.  We’ll come often enough, you may be sure.”  And of this, too, Reuben soon saw the wisdom.

“O Draxy, Draxy, my little girl!” he said one day, when, just after breakfast, she ran in, exclaiming,—­

“Father dear, we’re coming to take dinner with you and ma to-day.  It’s a surprise party, and the chickens have come first; they’re in the kitchen now!”

“O Draxy, Draxy,” he exclaimed, “it’s a great deal nicer not to know it beforehand.  How could you be so wise, child?”

Draxy put her arms round his neck and did not speak for a moment.  Then she said, “I don’t think it is wisdom, dear.  Real true love knows by instinct, just as the bee does, which shaped cell will hold most honey.  I’m only a honey-maker for my darlings.”