Page:Saxe Holm's Stories, Series Two.djvu/20

10 followed in Berlin; they lived together; and Wilhelm's babies knew no difference in love and care between their uncle Karl and their father. The sister was much younger; Wilhelm and Karl had laid by their first earnings to bring her out to join them, and for some years they had all lived in one family in such peace and happiness as are not often seen among laboring people of American birth. No thought of discontent, no dream of ambition for a higher position, entered their heads. Home love, comfort, industry, and honesty—these were the watchwords of their lives, the key-notes of all their actions. When Wilhelm and Annette were married, there was no change in this atmosphere of content and industry, except an immeasurable increase of happiness as child after child came, bringing the ineffable sunshine of babyhood into the two households.

Just before the sad news of Karl's death, a new and very great element of enjoyment had been introduced into Wilhelm's family. Margaret Warren had come to live in his house.

Margaret Warren was the daughter of a Congregationalist minister. Her life had been passed in small country villages in the Western States. She had known privations, hardships, discomforts of all sorts; her father was a gentleman and a scholar, and wretchedly out of place in the pioneer western life; he did not understand the people; the people misinterpreted him; his heart was full of love for