can trust my girls’ characters to her training, for she is a true woman; and if she errs at all in any direction, it is the right one, only a little too rigidly followed.’  I am frequently asked how she is related to me, for people can not believe that she is merely the governess of our children.  Kate, will you tell her that it is my desire that she should accompany you?  Speak to her at once, that I may know how many staterooms I shall engage on the steamer.”

“Come with me, Louis, and speak to her yourself.”

They went upstairs together, and paused on the threshold of Felix’s room to observe what was passing within.

The boy was propped by pillows into an upright position on the sofa, and was looking curiously into a small basket which Edna held on her lap.

She was reading to him a touching little letter just received from an invalid child, who had never walked, who was confined always to the house, and wrote to thank her, in sweet, childish style, for a story which she had read in the Magazine, and which made her very happy.

The invalid stated that her chief amusement consisted in tending a few flowers that grew in pots in her windows; and in token of her gratitude, she had made a nosegay of mignonette, pansies, and geranium leaves, which she sent with her scrawling letter.

In conclusion, the child asked that the woman whom, without having seen, she yet loved, would be so kind as to give her a list of such books as a little girl ought to study, and to write her “just a few lines” that she could keep under her pillow, to look at now and then.  As Edna finished reading the note, Felix took it, to examine the small, indistinct characters, and said: 

“Dear little thing!  Don’t you wish we knew her?  ‘Louie Lawrence.’  Of course, you will answer it, Edna?”

“Yes, immediately, and tell her how grateful I am for her generosity in sparing me a portion of her pet flowers.  Each word in her sweet little letter is as precious as a pearl, for it came from the very depths of her pure heart.”

“Oh! what a blessed thing it is to feel that you are doing some good in the world!  That little Louie says she prays for you every night before she goes to sleep!  What a comfort such letters must be to you!  Edna, how happy you look!  But there are tears shining in your eyes, they always come when you are glad.  What books will you tell her to study?”

“I will think about the subject, and let you read my answer.  Give me the ‘notelet’; I want to put it away securely among my treasures.  How deliciously fragrant the flowers are!  Only smell them, Felix!  Here, my darling, I will give them to you, and write to the little Louie how happy she made two people.”

She lifted the delicate bouquet so daintily fashioned by fairy child-fingers, inhaled the perfume, and, as she put it in the thin fingers of the cripple, she bent forward and kissed his fever-parched lips.  At this instant Felix saw his parents standing at the door, and held up the flowers triumphantly.