"Dear Laura, long before you reach my age you will understand. You will see that 'this world's a room of sickness,' and must have its nurses as well as its doctors, and I can truly say,
"'I have often blessed my sorrows,
That bring others' griefs so near.'"
"You are the nicest old thing in the world," cried Laura, with a tremendous hug, and several admiring pats on her mother's back. "I mean to have ten children exactly like you. But I am not going to bed in the day-time; you may depend on that. There, lie down on the sofa and let me cover you with the afghan."
Laura looked so refreshed the next day that her mother could not find it in her heart to make an invalid of her, or forbid her visit to the Astor Library. Armed with pencil and paper, therefore, she set gaily forth, and was soon seated at a table with eight or ten volumes before her, out of which she got some amusement, but nothing serviceable. She went back to her mother rather crestfallen.
"I could have saved you all this trouble," said Mrs. Grey, "if you had told me what you wanted;" and going to the nearest book-case she took down several books which exactly met Laura's wishes. The result will be seen by and by. Margaret, meanwhile, had begun a new picture in place of the one defaced by the children, and as the three sat together reading, painting, chatting, they formed a trio almost any one would have enjoyed watching. Laura feeling the relief of her children's convalescence, was particularly happy.
"How nice it is to be at home," she cried. "I shouldn't mind living a hundred years if I could always have things just as they are now."
"Nor I," said Margaret.
"Nor I," said Mrs. Grey, smiling; "but things won't go on a hundred years just so, nor should we live a hundred years if they did. It is better to leave our destiny in wiser hands than our own."