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These were among the echoes to which Lucie, sometimes pensive,

sometimes amused and laughing, listened in the echoing corner,

until her little daughter was six years old. How near to her

heart the echoes of her child's tread came, and those of her own

dear father's, always active and self-possessed, and those of her

dear husband's, need not be told. Nor, how the lightest echo of

their united home, directed by herself with such a wise and

elegant thrift that it was more abundant than any waste, was

music to her.