How came you to think of coming to me?"

"My room being over this, you know, it was easy to hear the voice of a
person in an uneasy sleep. I am glad I happened to be awake: so I put
on my cloak and came."

Morris did not say that Edward had heard the stifled cry also, and that
she had met him on the stairs coming to beg that she would see what
could be done. Hester having slept through it, Margaret need never know
that other ears than Morris' had heard her. Thus had Hope and Morris
tacitly agreed.

"Now, my dear, when I have warmed this flannel, to put about your feet,
you must go to sleep again. I will not leave you till daylight--till
the house is near being astir: so you may sleep without being afraid of
bad dreams. I will rouse you if I see you disturbed. Now, no more
talking, or we shall have the house up; and all this had better be
between you and me."

To satisfy Margaret, Morris lay down on the outside of the bed, warmly
covered; and the nurse once more, as in old days, felt her favourite
child breathing quietly against her shoulder: once more she wiped away
the standing tears, and prayed in her heart for the object of her care.
If her prayer had had words, it would have been this:--

"Thou hast been pleased to take to thyself the parents of these dear
children; and surely thou wilt be therefore pleased to be to them as
father and mother, or to raise up or spare to them such as may be so.
This is what I would ask for myself; that I may be that comfort to them.
Thou knowest that a strange trouble hath entered this house--thou
knowest, for thine eye seeth beneath the face into the heart, as the sun
shines into a locked chamber at noon. Thou knowest what these young
creatures know not. Make holy to them what thou knowest. Let thy
silence rest upon that which must not be spoken. Let thy strength be
supplied where temptation is hardest. Let the innocence which has come
forth from thine own hand be kept fit to appear in all the light of thy
countenance. Oh! let them never be seen sinking with shame before thee.
Father, if thou hast made thy children to love one another for their
good, let not love be a grief and a snare to such as these. Thou canst
turn the hearts even of the wicked: turn the hearts of these thy dutiful
children to love, where love may be all honour and no shame, so that
they may have no more mysteries from each other, as I am sure they have
none from thee. All who know them have do