“No, mamma, not by any means, but how could I suppose my wise oldest brother would care for such a trifle?” returned the little girl in a sprightly tone.

“My dear,” said her mother, “it is the little things—­little pleasures, little vexations—­that far more than the great make up the sum total of our happiness or misery in this life.”

Edward was very silent during the rest of the evening, and his mother, watching him furtively and putting that and that together, felt sure that something had gone wrong between him and his young wife.

When the good-nights had been said and the family had scattered to their rooms, he lingered behind, and his mother, who had left the room, perceiving it, returned to find him standing on the hearth, gazing moodily into the fire.

She went to him, and laying her hand gently on his shoulder.  “My dear boy,” she said, in her sweet low tones, “I cannot help seeing that something has gone wrong with you; I don’t ask what it is, but you have your mother’s sympathy in every trouble.”

“It is unfortunately something you would not want me to repeat even to you, my best and dearest of mothers, but your assurance of sympathy is sweet and comforting, nevertheless,” he said, taking her in his arms with a look and manner so like his father’s, that tears sprang unbidden to her eyes.

“Ah,” he said presently, with a sigh that betrayed more than he was aware of, “my father was a happy man in having such a woman for his wife!”

“A good husband makes a good wife, my boy,” she returned, gazing searchingly yet tenderly into his eyes; “and I think no woman with any heart at all could have failed to be such to him.”

“I am not worthy to be his son,” he murmured, the hot blood mounting to his very hair.

There was a moment or more of silence, then she said, softly caressing his hair and cheek as she spoke, “Edward, my son, be very patient, very gentle, forbearing and loving toward the orphan child, the care of whom you assumed of your own free will, the little wife you have promised to love and cherish to life’s end.”

“Yes, mother, I have tried very earnestly to be all that to her—­but she is such a child that she needs guidance and control, and I cannot let her show disrespect to you or my grandfather.”

“She has always been both dutiful and affectionate to me, Ned, and I have never known her to say a disrespectful word to or about your grandfather.”

“Did you not notice the looks she gave him at the table, to-night? the tone in which she replied when he spoke to her?”

“I tried not to do so,” she said with a smile.  “I learned when my first children were young that it was the part of wisdom to be sometimes blind to venial faults.  Not,” she added more gravely, “that I would ever put disrespect to my father in that category, but we must not make too much of a little girlish petulance, especially when excited by a generous sympathy with the troubles of another.”