"I am better alone," said Ellen, with a repelling motion of the hand. "If I need any thing, I will ring for Meggie; she is quite accustomed to my headaches."
"But, Nellie," said her cousin, in a beseeching tone, "something in your manner tells me that you do not love me, and yet I am not conscious that I have offended you. I can not go from——, without being at peace with everybody. The sermon was so full of mercy and kindness this morning!"
"I do not feel like hearing a sermon to-day," said Ellen, "and you will oblige me, Jennie, if you will leave me to myself, it is decidedly the best way to relieve me."
Jennie said no more; but arranging her cousin's shawl closer about her, and darkening the room, she placed the cooling liquid which she had prepared near the bed, and softly left the room. There was a slight shadow upon her brow as she entered her uncle's study, but it was banished by his welcome kiss. Her aunt and two cousins sat in a bay-window facing the south. Here they had always assembled on Sundays, until there came to be a sort of consecrated air about that quiet room, and something hallowed in the lovely view seen from the window.
"Here is your nook, Jennie, we have been expecting you for some time!" said Carrie, "there'll be such a sad vacancy next Sunday! I don't believe I shall love this room any more after you are gone, dear cousin!"
"I am glad if my presence makes it happier to you, Carrie," replied Jennie; "but you forget that uncle, and aunt, and Mary, and Ellen will be left to you besides the pleasant associations that cluster about all these familiar objects, while I shall be deprived of every thing but dear mamma."
"But every body will love you, Jennie," said Mary, "and you have the power to draw around you whoever you wish, so that your life will be sure to be sunny wherever you go."
"Not every body, Mary," said Jennie, looking thoughtfully upon the glorious view that was spread out before them, "if so, my heart would feel no weight upon it to-day. It is not well," she continued, "to have too much sunshine; else the storms would never be permitted to come; I don't believe we should truly appreciate and love this bright landscape if the shadows were not often flitting over it, thus making the glory more apparent!"
"You are right my child," said Mr. Halberg, "the trying dispensations of our life are wisely ordered, and who of us would dare to wish it otherwise!"
"And yet it seems," said Mary, "as if sorrow never came to some people, they glide through the world so unruffled and cheerful!"