The Montgomery advertiser., 1908-05-03
SALTS TABLE.

on your name?' And then a sudden light came into her eyes; and there was exultation in her weak voice as she said: ss
 "She is to be our only one let her be indeed our son, Call her by the. name we both love" For answer he rose and laid his hand. very very ten derly on the baby as he said:
 This dear one, my sweet wife who will carry your soul in her breast. will be my son; the only son shall ever have. All my life long I shall. please Almighty God so love her-our little Stephen--as you and I love each other"
 She laid her hand on his so that 1t touched at once her husband and her child. Then she raised the other weak arm, and placed 1t round his neck. and their lips met. Her soul went out in this last kiss <
 By degrees Squire Norman began to shake off the apathy of his grief As the personal side of 1t became less keen. SO memory began to. have its compensations.
 Time Is. atfer all. the only. spiritual anodyne. The future. when we shall meet those who are gone before: and the past. when the dead come back to us in memory and in sleep, are it's two phases. s.
 The throbbing of living heart has music which is at least in harmony
 
 With his coming back to the inter- ests of life. the pleasure of Stephen Norman in his little daughter grew. He had from the first loved the baby in that it was the legacy of his dar- ling, and the bond between them; and tery of fatherhood. But now he be- gan to love his child for her own sake.
 Little stephen had winning ways which sent deep roots into her fathers 1 heart. Time went quickly by, and | Norman was only recalled to it's pass ing by the growth of his child. But l his baby was one and one only. Any l change in it was not only in itself 1 a new experience, but brought into juxtatposition what is, with what was. | The change that began to mark the divergence of sex were positive shocks to him. for they were unexpected. At first there was through all his love for his child certain resentment of her sex. His old hope of son had been rooted too deeply to give way easily. But when the conviction came. and with 1t the habit of it's acknowl- edgment there came also a certain res ignation. which is the halting place for satisfaction. But he never, not then nor afterwards, quite lost the old belief that Stephen was indeed a son. This belief tinged all his after life and moulded his policy with re- gard to his girls upbringtnR. If she was to be indeed his son as well as his daughter. she must from the first be accustumed to boyish as well as to girlish ways. This, in that she was an only child. was not a difficult mat ter to accomplish. Had she had broth CTS and sisters, matters of her sex would soon have found their own level.
 Trharo ua. ona ,a..o, ,rho nh1acfad strongly to any deviation from the conventional rule of a girls education. This was Miss Laetitia Rowly, who took after a time, in so far as such a place could be taken. that of the child's mother. Laetitia Rowly was younR aunt of Squire Rowly of Norwood; the younger sister of his father and some sixteen years his own senior. When the old Squire's second wife had died, Laetitia. then a conceded spinster of thirty-six. had taken possession Of the young Margaret. When Margaret had married Squire Norman. Miss Rowly was well satisfied; for she had known stephen Norman all her life Though she could have wished a younger bridegroom for her darling, she knew 1t would be hard to get better man or one of more suitable station in lire. Also she knew that Margaret loved him. and the women who had never found the happiness of mutual love in her own life found a pleasure in the romance of true love, even when the wooer was middle aged.
 Though Stephen was a sweet child she was a wilful one, and verS early in her life manifested dominant na- ture This was secret pleasure to her father, who, never losing sight of his old idea that she was both son and daughter. took pleasure as well as pride out of each manifestation or her imperial will