The faint light was touching her face, and her mournful dress with its heavy crape trimmings,--there were no white chenille and silver brooches now; Joy had laid these things aside of her own wish.

It is a very small matter, to be sure, this mourning; but in Joy's case it mirrored her real grief very completely.

The something which she had _not_ felt when her mother died, she felt now, to the full.

She had a sort of notion,--an ignorant, childish notion, but very real to her,--that it was wicked to wear bows and hair-ribbons now.
She had been sitting so for some time, with her head in her aunt's lap, quite silent, her eyes looking off through the window.
"Why not have a little singing ?" said Mrs.Breynton, in her pleasant, hushed voice;--it was always a little different somehow, Sunday nights; a little more quiet.
Gypsy went to the piano, and usurped Winnie's throne on the stool, much to that young gentleman's disgust.
"What shall it be, mother ?" "Joy's hymn, dear." Gypsy began, without further explanation, to play a low, sweet prelude, and then they sang through the hymn that Joy had learned and loved in these few desolate weeks: "There is an eye that never sleeps Beneath the wing of night; There is an ear that never shuts When sink the beams of light.
"There is an arm that never tires When human strength gives way-- There is a love that never fails When earthly loves decay." Joy tried to sing, but just there she broke down.

Gypsy's voice faltered a little, and Mrs.Breynton sang very softly to the end.
After that they were all still; Joy had hidden her face.