"I think in mine, if it is all the same to you, ladies," answered Mary, with a little quiver in her voice, but quite decidedly. "I have been thinking on what Miss Leighton said about trust, and I don't think it becomes a Christian to give way to fear."
"Why, that is a brave girl!" said I, well-pleased, "You may leave the doors open between, if you like!" Amabel added.
But I observed after all, that she shut them.
"That is a grand victory!" said Amabel, when she had withdrawn. "And not the less that there is really nothing to be afraid of."
She took the candle as she spoke and went to look at her mother's picture.
"'Tis a lovely face," she observed after a little silence. "I never saw one that pleased me better; but who is it so like?"
"Look in the glass and see?" said I, "It is as like you as one pea to another. I wonder whether that is your father's picture next."
"It is not my notion of him!" said Amabel, studying the weak handsome face which in all its softness had a certain look of obstinacy often to be seen in such faces. "I wish you had a picture of your own mother, Lucy!"
"Thank you, but I do not know that I do!" I replied. "I would rather wait and see how she looks. But Amabel, you will take cold standing about so in your nightgown. We ought to be in bed."
Amabel and I had been used all our lives to occupy separate beds, but somehow to-night we thought that the great curtained bedstead looked very large for one, and we agreed to sleep together. Amabel fell asleep directly, but I lay awake a long time listening to the moan of the wind, the rustling and cracking which one always hears among old furniture at night, and the roar of a waterfall which I had noticed before and which I now heard more distinctly in the stillness.