“I don’t agree with you, mother,” Margaret had answered.  “I think it is theirs that are tiny—­trivial indeed, and ours that are great.  People in the world lose the values of life by having too much choice; too much choice—­of things not worth having.  This makes them miss the real things—­just as any one living in a city cannot see the stars for the electric lights.  But we, sitting quiet in our corner, have time to watch and listen, when the others must hurry by.  We have time, for instance, to watch that sunset yonder, whereas some of our worldly friends would be busy dressing to go out to a bad play.  We can sit here and listen to that bird singing his vespers, as long as he will sing—­and personally I wouldn’t exchange him for a prima donna.  Far from being poor in excitements, I think we have quite as many as are good for us, and those we have are very beautiful and real.”

“You are a brave child,” answered her mother.  “Come and kiss me,” and she took the beautiful gold head into her hands and kissed her daughter with her sweet old mouth, so lost among wrinkles that it was sometimes hard to find it.

“But am I not right, mother?” said Margaret.

“Yes! you are right, dear, but you seem too young to know such wisdom.”

“I have to thank you for it, darling,” answered Margaret, bending down and kissing her mother’s beautiful gray hair.

“Ah! little one,” replied the mother, “it is well to be wise, but it is good to be foolish when we are young—­and I fear I have robbed you of your foolishness.”

“I shall believe you have if you talk like that,” retorted Margaret, laughingly taking her mother into her arms and gently shaking her, as she sometimes did When the old lady was supposed to have been “naughty.”

* * * * *

So for Margaret and her mother the days pass, and at first, as we have said, it may seem a dull life, and even a hard one, for Margaret.  But she herself has long ceased to think so, and she dreads the inevitable moment when the divine friendship between her and her old mother must come to an end.  She knows, of course, that it must come, and that the day cannot be far off when the weary old limbs will refuse to make the tiny journeys from bedroom to rocking-chair, which have long been all that has been demanded of them; when the brave, humorous old eyes will be so weary that they cannot keep open any more in this world.  The thought is one that is insupportably lonely, and sometimes she looks at the invalid-chair, at the cup and saucer in which she serves her mother’s simple food, at the medicine-bottle and the measuring-glass, at the knitted shawl which protects the frail old form against draughts, and at all such sad furniture of an invalid’s life, and pictures the day when the homely, affectionate use of all these things will be gone forever; for so poignant is humanity that it sanctifies with endearing associations even objects in themselves so painful and prosaic.  And it seems to Margaret that when that day comes it would be most natural for her to go on the same journey with her mother.