"God helping me, yes, dear. Thank you for saying that. Now don't you want me to sing to you? I'll darken your room and set the door ajar, and then I'll go to the parlor and play soft, rippling, silvery things, and sing to you, and you will fall asleep while I'm singing, and have a lovely nap before they all come home."
As Grace went down the stairs, she paused a moment at the door of the big dining-room, "large as a town-hall," her father sometimes said. Everything at Wishing-Brae was of ample size—great rooms, lofty ceilings, big fire-places, broad windows.
"I missed the sideboard, the splendid old mahogany piece with its deep winy lustre, and the curious carved work. Mother must have grieved to part with it. Surely uncle and aunt couldn't have known of these straits. Well, I'm at home now, and they need somebody to manage for them. Uncle always said I had a business head. God helping me, I'll pull my people out of the slough of despond."
The young girl went into the parlor, where the amber light from the west was beginning to fall upon the old Wainwright portraits, the candelabra with their prisms pendent, and the faded cushions and rugs. Playing softly, as she had said, singing sweetly "Abide with me" and "Sun of my soul," the mother was soothed into a peaceful little half-hour of sleep, in which she dreamed that God had sent her an angel guest, whose name was Grace.