For it has its bright side; and its very darkest, when no sin is mixed up therewith, is brighter than many an outwardly prosperous life.
"Better is a dinner of herbs, where love is, than a stalled ox and hatred therewith.

Better is a dry morsel, and quietness therewith, than a house full of sacrifices and strife." With these two sage proverbs--which all acknowledge and scarcely any really believe, or surely they would act a little more as if they did--I leave Johanna Leaf sitting silently in her solitary parlor, knitting stockings for her child; weaving many a mingled web of thought withal, yet never letting a stitch go down; and Hilary Leaf walking cheerily and fearlessly up one strange street and down another to find out the "bad" place, where she once had no idea it would ever have been her lot to go .-- One thing she knew, and gloried in the knowledge, that if Robert Lyon had known she was going, or known half the cares she had to meet, he would have recrossed the Indian seas--have risked fortune, competence, hope of the future, which was the only cheer of his hard present--in order to save her from them all.
The minute history of this painful day I do not mean to tell.

Hilary never told it till, years after, she wept it out upon a bosom that could understand the whole, and would take good care that while the life beat in his she never should go through the like again.
Ascott came home--that is, was brought home--very humbled, contrite, and grateful.

There was no one to meet him but his Aunt Johanna, and she just kissed him quietly, and bade him come over to the fire; he was shivering, and somewhat pale.

He had even two tears in his handsome eyes, the first Ascott had been known to shed since he was a boy.