She beautifies everything she
touches, and she is only in her right place when all the flower of the
world's beauty is about her. But some day that shall be; and meantime
there is nothing to hinder my liking this." He had almost an ideal
home with Lilian's mother, as he wrote to his own mother, and every
time he went out of it in the morning he felt himself a better man
than he was when he went into it at night. His mother and father
journeyed a thousand miles to see it, and felt as John did
himself--thanked Heaven for the promise of a child like Lilian--one so
forgetful of herself, so thoughtful for every one else, so candid, so
generous, so gentle, so good. "She is nothing but a child," said Mrs.
Sterling for the thousandth time, "and yet how lofty she is!--so lofty
and so sweet! What will she be at thirty if she is this at seventeen?
It makes me tremble to think of John's being blest so, as if it were
too much, as if some fate must overtake him."
"He must become a very superior man under the influence of such a wife
as Lilian will be," said Mr. Sterling. "Helen shall go on and spend
the winter with John: they teach canaries to sing," said he, stroking
Helen's black hair, "by hanging up their cages in the same room with a
nightingale's."
And so Helen was despatched on the journey, and made another member in
the little family, for John's friends merely had rooms, and enjoyed
no more sufferance than other guests in the penetralia of the house.
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