Aunt Amy looked on the poor woman with great kindness; and Minnie, thinking all the time of the sunbeams, did the same. Speaking in gentle tones, aunt Amy soon found the way to the poor woman's heart, and drew from her the story of her woes. It had been a long time since she had heard a voice of kindness, or met with affectionate sympathy like that now shown to her by Minnie's aunt. It was not lost upon her. Trouble and sin had long frozen up her better feelings. But under the warmth of aunt Amy's words of hope and love, the ice melted, and the poor creature wept freely as she told of her early and better days; of her husband's fall into evil habits; of her own evil temper, which his bad treatment had excited; and of her poverty, and sorrow, and despair.