I had taken him to be a better Christian.' More words had sprung from these.

Mrs.Woodward, who, in truth, loved Norman the better for the continuance of his sorrow, would not give up his part; and so the mother and child parted, and the two sisters parted, not quarrelling indeed, not absolutely with angry words, but in a tone of mind towards each other widely differing from that of former years.

Mrs.Woodward had lost none of the love of the parent; but Gertrude had forgotten somewhat of the reverence of the child.
All this had added much to the grief created by Katie's illness.
And then of a sudden Katie became silent, as well as sad and ill -- silent and sad, but so soft, so loving in her manner.

Her gentle little caresses, the tender love ever lying in her eye, the constant pressure of her thin small hand, would all but break her mother's heart.

Katie would sit beside her on the sofa in the drawing-room for hours; a book, taken up as an excuse, would be in her lap, and she would sit there gazing listlessly into the vacant daylight till the evening would come; and then, when the room was shaded and sombre, when the light of the fire merely served to make the objects indistinct, she would lean gently and by degrees upon her mother's bosom, would coax her mother's arm round her neck, and would thus creep as it were into her mother's heart of hearts.