To be sure, there was an end of Newport gayeties; for Lillie vowed and declared that she would not go to Newport and take cheap board, and live without a carriage.  She didn’t want the Follingsbees and the Tompkinses and the Simpkinses talking about her, and saying that they had failed.  Her mother worked like a servant for her in smartening her up, and tidying her old dresses, of which one would think that she had a stock to last for many years.  And thus, with everybody sympathizing with her, and everybody helping her, Lillie subsided into enacting the part of a patient, persecuted saint.  She was touchingly resigned, and wore an air of pleasing melancholy.  John had asked her pardon for all the hasty words he said to her in the terrible interview; and she had forgiven him with edifying meekness.  “Of course,” she remarked to her mother, “she knew he would be sorry for the way he had spoken to her; and she was very glad that he had the grace to confess it.”

So life went on and on with John.  He never forgot his sister’s words, but received them into his heart as a message from his mother in heaven.  From that time, no one could have judged by any word, look, or action of his that his wife was not what she had always been to him.

Meanwhile Rose was happily married, and settled down in the Ferguson place; where her husband and she formed one family with her parents.  It was a pleasant, cosey, social, friendly neighborhood.  After all, John found that his cross was not so very heavy to carry, when once he had made up his mind that it must be borne.  By never expecting much, he was never disappointed.  Having made up his mind that he was to serve and to give without receiving, he did it, and began to find pleasure in it.  By and by, the little Lillie, growing up by her mother’s side, began to be a compensation for all he had suffered.  The little creature inherited her mother’s beauty, the dazzling delicacy of her complexion, the abundance of her golden hair; but there had been given to her also her father’s magnanimous and generous nature.  Lillie was a selfish, exacting mother; and such women often succeed in teaching to their children patience and self-denial.  As soon as the little creature could walk, she was her father’s constant play-fellow and companion.  He took her with him everywhere.  He was never weary of talking with her and playing with her; and gradually he relieved the mother of all care of her early training.  When, in time, two others were added to the nursery troop, Lillie became a perfect model of a gracious, motherly, little older sister.

Did all this patience and devotion of the husband at last awaken any thing like love in the wife?  Lillie was not naturally rich in emotion.  Under the best education and development, she would have been rather wanting in the loving power; and the whole course of her education had been directed to suppress what little she had, and to concentrate all her feelings upon herself.