This household happiness did not come all at once, but John and Meg had found the key to it, and each year of married life taught them how to use it, unlocking the treasuries of real home love and mutual helpfulness, which the poorest may possess, and the richest cannot buy.  This is the sort of shelf on which young wives and mothers may consent to be laid, safe from the restless fret and fever of the world, finding loyal lovers in the little sons and daughters who cling to them, undaunted by sorrow, poverty, or age, walking side by side, through fair and stormy weather, with a faithful friend, who is, in the true sense of the good old Saxon word, the ‘house-band’, and learning, as Meg learned, that a woman’s happiest kingdom is home, her highest honor the art of ruling it not as a queen, but as a wise wife and mother.

CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

LAZY LAURENCE

Laurie went to Nice intending to stay a week, and remained a month.  He was tired of wandering about alone, and Amy’s familiar presence seemed to give a homelike charm to the foreign scenes in which she bore a part.  He rather missed the ‘petting’ he used to receive, and enjoyed a taste of it again, for no attentions, however flattering, from strangers, were half so pleasant as the sisterly adoration of the girls at home.  Amy never would pet him like the others, but she was very glad to see him now, and quite clung to him, feeling that he was the representative of the dear family for whom she longed more than she would confess.  They naturally took comfort in each other’s society and were much together, riding, walking, dancing, or dawdling, for at Nice no one can be very industrious during the gay season.  But, while apparently amusing themselves in the most careless fashion, they were half-consciously making discoveries and forming opinions about each other.  Amy rose daily in the estimation of her friend, but he sank in hers, and each felt the truth before a word was spoken.  Amy tried to please, and succeeded, for she was grateful for the many pleasures he gave her, and repaid him with the little services to which womanly women know how to lend an indescribable charm.  Laurie made no effort of any kind, but just let himself drift along as comfortably as possible, trying to forget, and feeling that all women owed him a kind word because one had been cold to him.  It cost him no effort to be generous, and he would have given Amy all the trinkets in Nice if she would have taken them, but at the same time he felt that he could not change the opinion she was forming of him, and he rather dreaded the keen blue eyes that seemed to watch him with such half-sorrowful, half-scornful surprise.

“All the rest have gone to Monaco for the day.  I preferred to stay at home and write letters.  They are done now, and I am going to Valrosa to sketch, will you come?” said Amy, as she joined Laurie one lovely day when he lounged in as usual, about noon.