"Your mother will find but a shadow of the rosy girl she left behind her."
Agnes sighed, and then got up and looked in the glass.
"I do not see that I am different," she said, after a moment's contemplation.
"No, I daresay you would not notice it in yourself from day to day. But you have nothing special to trouble you, my dear, I hope?"
"Not at all, auntie. But I had no idea the anxiety of a family would be so great."
Aunt Phyllis smiled a sweet placid smile, which proceeded from a heart at rest after storms.
"You ought not to be carrying your own burdens though, dear child," she said softly.
Agnes had seated herself at her aunt's feet, on the wide stool which the children said was made on purpose for them to share, and now looked up in her aunt's face with tearful eyes.
"No," she said; "that is often what grieves me. I am afraid, auntie, I thought I should be sure to get on, and trusted in my own cleverness too much, and then when difficulties come I get downhearted."
"And do you try the remedy of taking everything to your Lord directly it comes?"