CHAPTER IV.

UNDER THE ELMS.

"YOUR Father knoweth!"

Lucia raised her head suddenly. It seemed almost as if the waving breeze in the trees overhead had whispered the words audibly.

Then if He knew, why was it? Could she know too?

She thought of an earthly father—the very best and dearest she knew—and she wondered how he would do with his children.

He would take them a journey, and each day or each hour he would tell them which way to go and what he wanted them to do. The children would not question his wisdom or his love. The more unknown the way, the more they would trust him. They would trust and obey.

"Your Father knoweth."

"Yes, He does," said Lucia beneath her breath, "and I will trust and obey. I will not struggle any more, but take my Father's will as entirely best."

When she had reached that point, there came a flood of sunshine to illumine what had looked so dark before.

The care of the five little brothers and sisters was no longer a burden too great for her shoulders; the broken visit with its hardly understood charms ceased to cause her such a heartache whenever she thought of it; for she had resigned the one and the other to His will, who surely loved her, and instead of fret and pain came a peace that passed all understanding.

She took up her brush once more, but that drawing never got to its destination. Into that pond and waterlilies, into those daisies and clover, were painted a yielded heart; and to her eyes ever after the very colours told a tale that she could not give to others or part with for the world.

"For Christ henceforth," she said, as she heard the sound of the little voices coming through the intervening trees, and sounding silvery over the pond, and she put away her drawing and rose to meet the children with a happy smile, such as had not been on her face since she heard that bad news in the North. Then the little green gate swung open, and the children ran over the grass to her side.

"Oh, Lucia, it is so lovely!" exclaimed Evan. "I never saw such a place; and, do you know, there are nests and all sorts of things for Ivor and me?"

Barbara offered a kiss, and Queenie threw her arms round her neck. "I'se so d'lad to get back," she said, "and I do want my lickle dinner so!"

Lucia could laugh as light-heartedly as any of them now, and she wondered that she could ever have thought the children so disagreeable.

At the rose-covered porch May stood waiting.

"It's all done," she announced. "Just come and see how neat we have made everything. Barbara, you and I are to have this cupboard all to ourselves, besides those drawers, and nurse says Evan and Ivor are not to come into our room at all."

"All right," said Evan, "I don't want to. You keep to yours and we'll keep to ours, won't we, Ivor? What have you given us? I suppose we shall have to 'shift,' as Mrs. Giah calls it."

Mrs. Giah was the woman who had charge of the cottage when they were not there. She kept occasional fires burning, aired the rooms, let in the sunshine, and shut out the rain, and prepared the place for them if any of the family wanted to come down for a few days.

Mrs. Giah was an old servant who had known and nursed Lucia's mother, so that though the children laughed softly at her amusing sayings, it was with a certain tenderness which long years of loving service had earned for the old woman. On her part, no people in the world were like her Carews. Though she did think that the young people could sometimes "shift" a little more than they seemed inclined to do, no one in the world must say a word against them in her hearing.