Most people would have thought the little town a quiet, dreamy place; but to those two children if seemed the world; and after they had crossed the bridge, they each clasped more tightly the hands which they held, and looked shyly up from beneath their drooped eyelids when spoken to by any of their mother's friends.

Mrs.
Browne was regularly asked by some one to stay to dinner after morning church, and as regularly declined, rather to the timid children's relief; although in the week-days they sometimes spoke together in a low voice of the pleasure it would be to them if mamma would go and dine at Mr.
Buxton's, where the little girl in white and that great tall boy lived.
Instead of staying there, or anywhere else, on Sundays, Mrs.Browne thought it her duty to go and cry over her husband's grave.

The custom had arisen out of true sorrow for his loss, for a kinder husband, and more worthy man, had never lived; but the simplicity of her sorrow had been destroyed by the observation of others on the mode of its manifestation.

They made way for her to cross the grass toward his grave; and she, fancying that it was expected of her, fell into the habit I have mentioned.

Her children, holding each a hand, felt awed and uncomfortable, and were sensitively conscious how often they were pointed out, as a mourning group, to observation.
"I wish it would always rain on Sundays," said Edward one day to Maggie, in a garden conference.
"Why ?" asked she.
"Because then we bustle out of church, and get home as fast as we can, to save mamma's crape; and we have not to go and cry over papa." "I don't cry," said Maggie.