"How your mother must be longing to see you! I should not have thought that she could have lived so long without you!"
"Words cannot express how I long to see her!" exclaimed Flora, with tears in her eyes.
"I think that it might be managed in some way. If you could not visit Wingsdale, she might come to London--"
Flora looked so uneasy at the proposition that Ada changed the conversation in pure good nature, wondering much in her mind what could have occurred to separate a parent so much beloved from so dutiful a daughter.
"I hope that you have not given up your pen, Flora; that you don't think that your talented husband the author does enough in that line for you both?"
"Oh, I write a little sometimes," said Flora, in a tone of indifference.
"I never read anything so pretty as your hymns. Do you know, Flora," Ada added more gravely, "that I have often thought over the verses which you wrote during my first visit to Wingsdale, after we heard that solemn sermon from Mr. Ward on the subject of the sower and his seed!"
"I had almost forgotten them," said Flora.
"And the sermon too?"
"Well--I have heard so many since."