174 THE COUSINS.

earliest and purest delights. Nor did the influ-
ence of home cease with life. The blessed in
“eaven must often look back to its instructions
and its examples as the sources of their joys—the
first spring of that full river of delights of which
they drink. Lucy had not written, like Mary,
from her own feelings and her own observations.
Most of her ideas had been suggested by things
heard or read at various times; but they were
very good ideas, and well expressed for a girl of
her age; and as Mary listened to them, she felt
that if Lucy’s composition could only be shown to
Mrs. Butler, it would certainly gain the prize.
At first she rejoiced that her cousin’s absence
from school had removed from her so dangerous
arival; but Mary’s was a truly generous nature,
and before she had time to express this thought
in words, she was ashamed of it—ashamed that
she could have been so selfish as to forget her
cousin’s sorrow in her own joy, and that she could
feel pleasure in winning by an accident what, in
her opinion, another justly deserved. Mary said
nothing to Lucy of what she had thought at first,
or of what she now felt; but she did not cease