life to take care of mamma."

"I will, indeed," I cried. "I ask nothing better from Heaven than to give my life to her—my beautiful mother."

And then he told me that she would never walk again—that her flying feet were to rest forever more—that in her presence I must always be quite bright and cheerful, and never say one word of what I knew.

No more difficult task could have been laid on the heart of a child. I did it. No matter what I suffered, I always went into her room with a smile and bright, cheerful words.

So the long years passed; my beautiful mother grew better and happier and stronger—little dreaming that she was never to walk out in the meads and grounds again. She was always talking about them and saying where she should go and what she should do when she grew well.

Roses bloomed, lilies lived and died, the birds enjoyed their happy summer, then flew over the sea to warmer climes; summer dew and summer rain fell, the dead leaves were whirled in the autumn winds, and still my mother lay helpless. If this one year seemed so long, what would a lifetime be?

As some of her strength returned it seemed to me that mother grew more and more charming. She laughed and enjoyed all our care of her, and when the wonderful chair came from London, in which she could go round the garden, and could be wheeled from one room to another, she was as delighted as a child.

"Still," she said to my father, "it seems to me a pity almost, Roland, to have sent to London for this. I shall surely be able to walk soon."

He turned away from her with tears in his eyes. A month or two afterward we were both sitting with her, and she said, quite suddenly:

"It seems a long time since I began to lie here. I am afraid it will be many months before I get well again. I think I shall resign myself to proper invalids' fashions. I will have some pretty lace caps, Laura, and we will have more books." Then a wistful expression crossed her face and she said: "I would give anything on earth to walk, even only for ten minutes, by the side of the river; as I lie here I think so much about it. I know it in all its moods—when the wind hurries it and the little wavelets dash along; when the tide is deep and the water overflows among the reeds and grasses; when it is still and silent and the shadows of the stars lie on it, and when the sun turns it into a stream of living 

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