. There were
heart-breaking days to be lived through, when the terror was no longer
that he might die, but that he might live--deprived of speech, of
hearing, possibly of reason itself. Never while I live shall I forget
those days; but looking back, I can realise that they have taught me one
great lesson, branded it on heart and brain so that I can never, never
forget. The lesson is that death is not the last and worst enemy which
we are so apt to think it when our dear ones are in its grasp. Oh,
there were hours of darkness in which death seemed to us a lovely and
beautiful thing, when we blamed ourselves for shrinking from the wrench
of giving back a little child into God's tender care. Who could compare
a darkened life on earth with the perfected powers, the unimaginable
glories of eternity? There were times when our prayers were reversed,
and we asked God to take Billie home!

But he lived; he spoke; he opened his dark eyes and smiled upon us; he
demanded a battered "boy stout" doll, and hugged it to his pneumonia
jacket; he drank his milk, and said "More!" he grew cross and
fractious--oh, welcome, gladdening sign!--and said, "Doe away! No more
daddies! No more nursies! Don't want nobodies! Boo-hoo-hoo!" and we
went and wept for gladness.

Illness, the really critical touch-and-go illness which nurses call "a
good case," turns a home into an isolation camp. The outer world
retreats to an immeasurable distance, and the watchers stare out of the
windows, and behold with stupefaction hard-hearted men and women walking
abroad on two legs, with hats on their heads, and umbrellas in their
hands, talking and laughing and pursuing their petty avocations, not in
the least affected by the fact that the temperature had again soared up
to 104, and the doctor spoke gravely about heart strain. It seems
inconceivable that human creatures, living a few yards away, are
actually going to parties, and attending theatres, trying on new
clothes, and worrying about cracked cups.

It was with much the same shock of incredulity that, on descending to my
flat one afternoon, I was met with the news that a gentleman was in the
drawing-room waiting to see me. Bridget was out walking with the little
girls, and the orphan, as usual, had opened the door. I demanded to be
told "all about it," upon which she inhaled a deep breath, and set forth
her tale after the manner of a witness in the police court.

"He says to me, `Is Miss H