She drew in her own little rocker, which had travelled with her from her room at home, and settled beside him, book in hand, for a delightful two hours of social communion, such as they had not enjoyed for weeks before.
The reading and the talking that went on in that room, on that rainy Sabbath morning, were looked back to afterward as pleasant hours to be remembered. Occasionally the fact that it was Sunday, and she not at church, and a picture of the dear church at home, and the dear faces in the family pew, and the seat left vacant in the Sunday school room, would shadow Louise's face for an instant; but it brightened again. She had chosen her lot, guided, as she believed, by the hand of her Lord. It was not for a face realizing this to be in shadow.
It was not until the Sunday dinner had been eaten, and they were back again, those two, in the brightness of their enjoyed solitude, that the grave, preoccupied look on Louise's face told that her thoughts were busy with something outside of their surroundings—something that troubled her.
"Lewis, what shall we do this afternoon?" she asked him, interrupting a sentence in which he was declaring that a rainy Sunday was, after all, a blessing.
"Do!" he repeated. "Why, we will have a delightful Sunday afternoon talk, and a little reading, and a good deal of—well, I don't know just what name to give it; heart-rest, perhaps, would be a good one. Aren't you enjoying the day, dear?"
She turned toward him a smiling face.
"Yes, with a thoroughly selfish enjoyment, I am afraid. I was thinking of the family downstairs; what can we do to help them, Lewis?"
"Oh!" said her husband, and his face clouded; he seemed to have no other suggestion to offer.
"They did not look as though they were enjoying the day. I think it must be dreary for Dorothy and John. I wish we could contribute something to make the time seem less lonely to them. Suppose we go down, Lewis, and try what we can do."
Her husband looked as though that was the thing, of all others, which he had the least desire to do.