"Not even when they make you cry?"
"No, I think not—those are the thoughts that one loves to remember best."
"Come, Nathan," said aunt Hannah, appearing in the porch with a tallow candle in her hand, "it's almost bed-time."
Uncle Nathan arose and entered the kitchen. Seating himself at the little round stand, he opened a huge old Bible, that lay upon it, and putting on a pair of iron spectacles began to read.
Mary, seated by aunt Hannah, listened with gentle interest with her little hands folded in her lap, and her large grey eyes dwelling earnestly on the face of the white-haired reader.
When the chapter was done, they all knelt down, and uncle Nathan poured forth the fullness of his faith in a prayer, that went over the child's heart like the summer wind upon a water-lily, stirring all its young thought to their gentle depths, as the fragrant leaves of the lily give forth their sweetness. Two or three times she heard aunt Hannah murmur some words uneasily, as if a thought, at variance with her brother's prayer, disturbed her. But directly the child was enwrapped, heart and soul, in the earnest words that fell from the old man's lips, and when she stood up again, her face had a sort of glory in its expression. It was the first night in a long, long time that Mary had been so near heaven.
And this was the kind of home which Enoch Sharp had given to the orphan. Did she sleep well? If grateful thoughts can summon angels, many bright spirits hovered over her little bed that night.
But aunt Hannah never closed her eyes.