"The sun shines directly in your face, Fanny," said Mr. Legrange,
admiring the color in his wife's hair. "Shall I lower the shade?"
"Oh, no! thank you. I never want the sunshine shut out," replied
she, moving her chair a little.
"Not to-day of all days in the year, I suppose; not on the birthday
of our little Sunshine. And where is she?" asked Mr. Legrange, half
turning his chair from the table to the fire, and unfolding the damp
newspaper beside his plate.
"I told Susan to send her down as soon as she had done her
breakfast. Hark! I hear her." And the Sun, drawing his finger across
the mother's lips, helped them to so bright a smile, that her
husband said,--
"I am afraid we have more than our share of Sunshine, or at least
that I have, little wife."
The bright smile grew so bright as the lady bent a little toward her
husband, that the Sun whispered,--
"There's no need of sun here, I plainly see," but, for all that,
crept farther into the room; while the door opened, and in skipped a
little girl, who might have been taken for the beautiful lady at the
head of the table suddenly diminished to childish proportions, and
dressed in childish costume, but with all her beauty intensified by
the condensation: for the blue eyes were as large and clear, and
even deeper in their tint; the clustering hair was of a brighter
gold; and the fair skin pearlier in its whiteness, and richer in its
rosiness; while the gay exuberance of life, glowing and sparkling
from every curve and dimple of the child's face and figure, was,
even in the happy mother's face, somewhat dimmed by the shadows that
still must fall upon every life past its morning, be it never so
happy, or never so prosperous.
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