JUNE 163 



as she looks up into his face I catch her reply " Ay, lad, it's 

 many a year agone since you plucked the same sweet flowers 

 for the bouquet I carried on our wedding morn, done up they 

 were into the prettiest nosegay that ever a bride carried. Ay, 

 ours was a pretty wedding ! " " And this," he asks, standing 

 by a clump of peonies, " ye can call to mind, lass ? " " Surely, 

 John," she whispers, " it calls to mind the scarlet coat of our 

 laddie ; they were in bloom the day he came to bid us good- 

 bye before he sailed for India." Her voice falters, the tears 

 course down their cheeks, as side by side in the twilight they 

 face the crimson west, thinking of a grave far away across the 

 billows beneath the waving palms. 



Some few yards down the road is the picture of home 

 perfected, merry with earth's holiest music the voice of a 

 child. Mother and lassie, a pretty, blue-eyed mite, are 

 waiting for father to return home from toil in the neighbour- 

 ing town. The little mite has pleaded to stay up " only just 

 to say good-night to dada," and to give the tired toiler his 

 good-night kiss. Ah, the charm of a child's kiss ! I picture 

 the little lassie's tiny arms encircling her father's neck, his 

 toil forgotten for awhile in that lingering kiss ; and the verse 

 of a poem I had read somewhere comes to my memory, 

 called " Children-kisses" 



" Children-kisses, fresh and sweet as dawn-born roses, 



From velvet lips of gold-haired laddies, laughing misses ; 

 Who can count the wealth enshrined, in what encloses 

 Children-kisses ? " 



Idylls of love ! Heaven's own pictures ! 



These homely scenes, always suggestive of peace for 

 which so many crave, are the lungs through which we may 



