I try to labor faithfully, listening for the summons of Him who notices even the death of sparrows.  God will not call me hence, so long as He has any work for me to do on earth; and when I become useless, and can no longer serve Him here, I do not wish to live.  Through Christ I am told, ’Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid.’  Mr. Manning, I am not ignorant of, nor indifferent to, my physical condition; but, thank God!  I can say truly, I am not troubled, neither am I afraid, and my faith is—­

  ’All as God wills, who wisely heeds,
   To give or to withhold,
  And knoweth more of all my needs
   Than all my prayers have told.’”

The editor took off his glasses and wiped them, but the dimness was in his eyes; and after a minute, during which he recovered his old calmness, and hushed the holy chime, muffling the Folge Fond Bells, he said gayly and quietly: 

“Edna, one favor, at least, you will grant me.  The death of a relative in Louisiana has placed me in possession of an ample fortune, and I wish you to take my little Lila and travel for several years.  You are the only woman I ever knew to whom I would entrust her and her education, and it would gratify me beyond expression to feel that I had afforded you the pleasure which can not fail to result from such a tour.  Do not be too proud to accept a little happiness from my hands.”

“Thank you, my generous, noble friend!  I gratefully accept a great deal of happiness at this instant, but your kind offer I must decline.  I can not leave Felix.”

He sighed, took his hat, and his eyes ran over the face and figure of the governess.

“Edna Earl, your stubborn will makes you nearly akin to those gigantic fuci which are said to grow and flourish as submarine forests in the stormy channel of Terra del Fuego, where they shake their heads defiantly, always trembling, always triumphing, in the fierce lashing of waves that wear away rocks.  You belong to a very rare order of human algae, rocked and reared in the midst of tempests that would either bow down, or snap asunder, or beat out most natures.  As you will not grant my petition, try to forget it; we will bury the subject.  Good-bye!  I shall call to-morrow afternoon to take you to drive.”

With renewed zest Edna devoted every moment stolen from Felix, to the completion of her new book.  Her first had been a “bounteous promise”—­at least so said criticdom—­and she felt that the second would determine her literary position, would either place her reputation as an author beyond all cavil, or utterly crush her ambition.

Sometimes as she bent over her Ms., and paused to reread some passage just penned, which she had laboriously composed, and thought particularly good as an illustration of the idea she was striving to embody perspicuously, a smile would flit across her countenance while she asked herself: