Miss Hepsy was more than annoyed.  “A delicate child above all humbugs,” she muttered, as she sprinkled a few drops of spring water on the girl’s face, and held her smelling-salts to her nostrils.

“Ye’d better go out an’ get a mouthful of fresh air, I suppose,” she said ungraciously when Lucy rose at last, with a faint touch of returning colour in her cheeks.

And Lucy gladly went upstairs for her hat, and crept out into the beautiful sunshine.  The garden gate was locked, but she managed to turn the key, and went slowly, in a maze of delight, along the trim paths, past beds of roses, hollyhocks, pansies, and sweet-scented gilly-flowers.  The orchard beyond looked tempting indeed, where the sunbeams glistened through the bending boughs of apple, plum, and cherry trees, on the soft carpet of grass beneath.  She managed to unfasten the gate there too, and choosing a wide-spreading apple-tree, from which she could see the meadow and the river, flung herself on the grass beneath it.  There she fell asleep, and Tom found her an hour after.  His fine face looked worried and discontented, and he flung himself beside her, saying gloomily,—­

“How on earth I am to live here, Lucy Hurst, I don’t know.”

“What is it, Tom?” inquired she, forgetting her own troubles in sympathy for him.

“Oh, Uncle Josh, that’s all.  He hasn’t any patience with me, and makes me speak up impertinently to him.  And the things they say about mamma are perfectly shameful.  I won’t bear it now, I won’t.”

His sister’s gentle hand touched his lips to stem the passionate words.

“You remember, Tom,” she said softly, “what mamma said to us.  We were to endure all such little trials, remembering that it is God who sends them.  Think how grieved she would be if she could hear us grumbling so soon.”

“I don’t care; I can’t help it,” said the boy recklessly.  “It isn’t anything for you to be good, Lucy; you are just like mamma—­a kind of saint, I think.  For me it is just a long battle all day.  If a fellow conquered in the end, it would not matter; but as it is—­O Lucy, Lucy! why did mamma die?  It was so easy to be happy and good when we had her to love and help us.  I wish I were dead too.”

Poor, proud, passionate Tom!  His sister could only put her gentle arm about his neck and cry too, her heart so sorely re-echoed the painful longing in his voice.

So the first day at Thankful Rest did not promise very brightly for Tom and Lucy Hurst.

V.

SUNDAY