"Dear mother, let us go as visitors," said Maude. "Has not God sent us this kind friend to show you what to do? And we shall all be strong and well again for whatever comes next?"
"Can you be happy there, my son?" said she.
"As happy, or most likely more so than anywhere else, until I can work for you, mother," said Guy. "After all, I was not the owner of the Moat, and have no right to murmur at what the real owner chose to do."
"Thank God for this, my dear child; it is health and joy to hear you say so, and I almost think we would be wrong to decline Mr. Hazelwood's generous kindness, extraordinary, unexpected though it is."
"I don't believe his Dorothy, as he calls her, could have done his errand better," exclaimed Maude, "and I can't help thinking we shall love them all. Now, mother, prepare to make the most of our unexpected holiday."
Such a cheerful voice had not saluted her mother's ears for some time past, and after thought and prayer, a letter to the Squire accepting the invitation was despatched.
The picture not being finished, and feeling unwilling to hurry over it in her present exhausted state, Mrs. Falconer could not have the benefit of the price promised for it, and when the next day she contrived her errand of explanation with her employer into the City, she took with her to a jeweller's shop one of her few costly ornaments, a memorial of happier days; and the sum offered for it provided sufficiently for the immediate expenses of the journey. But the new, strange feelings attendant on the humiliating act, thankfulness to God for all His providential care, a sense of utter prostration of bodily power, ended at last in a long faint, which terrified her children, and produced in the kind-hearted landlady entire resignation to the departure of her lodgers without the usual term of notice thereof.
"Surely 'the Lord is my shepherd,'" said Mrs. Falconer; "and what a key-note is that sentence! It seems to flood the soul with promise and praise. Many may be the needful afflictions of the flock, but 'the Good Shepherd' leads them by 'the right way,' and when they are weary, His bosom is their resting-place."
