II.
GROWING IN GRACE.
Dorothy had finished her lessons and was sitting in the deep window seat in the nursery, looking out upon the water, and listening to the voices of the waves as they dashed against the shore.
She was on friendly terms with all her world, the flowers, the trees, and every dancing sunbeam held a language for her.
Horses, dogs and birds, every living thing that came into her life became her friends.
Her loving confidence in her fellow beings won from each the best he had to give.
So carefully had she been kept from all self-pity and the tearful sympathy of unwise friends that she was in every way a wholesome, happy, winsome little lassie.
There was no room in all the house that Dorothy loved quite so well as her own dear nursery. Here she always came to dream her dreams, or study out her weighty problems.
This was the room that mother dear had thought out for her, before ever she was born. Every detail spoke silently, but eloquently, to the child’s mind of harmony and purity, of true uplifting ideals.
The artistic coloring of walls and rugs, the few pictures chosen for their real value and lasting impressions; the wide outlook on sea and sky and garden, together with everything that could make for health and comfort, voiced the wise and loving care of the mother whose tender eyes looked down from above the mantel at the little dreamer in the window seat.
Suddenly, the door burst open and Lois, a child about a year younger than Dorothy, bounded in, while just behind and fairly tumbling over her came a great white dog, a Scotch collie called Rings, because of a buff-colored ring of hair around his tail.