12 THE COUSINS.

dulgent father, but he could scarcely be expected
to devote himself to the education of a little girl
as a mother would have done. Mr. Mowbray had
neither mother nor sister to whose charge the
motherless Mary might be confided, and he rejoiced
almost as much as his wife did, when her brother.
Mr. Lovett, having received intelligence of her ex-
treme and hopeless illness, came to visit her, and
begged that he might be permitted to take his niece
home with him. In Mrs. Lovett they both knew
that Mary would find a devoted an1 conscientious
friend.

Had this plan been communicated to Mary
under any ordinary cireumstanres, she would pro-
bably have refused her consent to it; but when
her mother, in a still, darkened chamber, propped
up in bed by pillows, called her to her side, and
in a low, husky voice told her that God, who had
given her a kind mother so long, was about to
take her to Himself; that she was to go home with
her Uncle Lovett, in order that her Aunt Lovett
might take the place to her of this dear lost
mother, and charged her to love and honour this
good uncle and aunt, and always to remember