“He has already blessed me,” said Vivia, softly.

Janet nestled nearer to Ray’s side, as they stood.  There was a tremor of gladness through all the dew of her glance.  Ray looked down at her for a moment, and his hard brow softened, in his eyes hung a light like the reflection of a star in a breaking wave.

“He has blessed me, too,” said he.  “Some day I shall be a man again.  I have thrown away my crutch, Vivia,—­for all my life I am going to have this little shoulder to lean upon.”

And over his sombre face a smile crept and deepened, like the yellow ray, that, after a long, dark day of driving rain, suddenly gilds the tree-tops and brims the sky; and though, when it went, the gloom shut drearily down again, still it bore the promise of fair day to-morrow.

* * * * *

HOUSE AND HOME PAPERS.

BY CHRISTOPHER CROWFIELD.

I.

THE RAVAGES OF A CARPET.

“My dear, it’s so cheap!”

These words were spoken by my wife, as she sat gracefully on a roll of
Brussels carpet which was spread out in flowery lengths on the floor of
Messrs. Ketchem & Co.

“It’s so cheap!”

Milton says that the love of praise is the last infirmity of noble minds.  I think he had not rightly considered the subject.  I believe that last infirmity is the love of getting things cheap!  Understand me, now.  I don’t mean the love of getting cheap things, by which one understands showy, trashy, ill-made, spurious articles, bearing certain apparent resemblances to better things.  All really sensible people are quite superior to that sort of cheapness.  But those fortunate accidents which put within the power of a man things really good and valuable for half or a third of their value what mortal virtue and resolution can withstand?  My friend Brown has a genuine Murillo, the joy of his heart and the light of his eyes, but he never fails to tell you, as its crowning merit, how he bought it in South America for just nothing,—­how it hung smoky and deserted in the back of a counting-room, and was thrown in as a makeweight to bind a bargain, and, upon being cleaned, turned out a genuine Murillo; and then he takes out his cigar, and calls your attention to the points in it; he adjusts the curtain to let the sunlight fall just in the right spot; he takes you to this and the other point of view; and all this time you must confess, that, in your mind as well as his, the consideration that he got all this beauty for ten dollars adds lustre to the painting.  Brown has paintings there for which he paid his thousands, and, being well advised, they are worth the thousands he paid; but this ewe-lamb that he got for nothing always gives him a secret exaltation in his own eyes.  He seems to have credited to himself personally merit to the amount of what he should have paid for the picture.  Then there is Mrs. Croesus, at the party