er. You may have much to
undergo, and must submit to a sofa life and much nursing, but I think
you will not leave him so soon.'

There was a long pause; at last she said, 'O, Dr. May, I beg your
pardon. If I had known, I would never--'

'Never what, my dear?'

'Never have consented! It is such a grievous thing for a professional
man to have a sick wife.'

'It is exactly what he wanted, my dear, if you will not fly at me for
saying so. Nothing else could teach him that patients are not cases
but persons; and here he comes to tell you what he thinks of the
trouble of a sick wife.'

'Well,' said Dr. May, as he and Ethel walked away together, 'poor young
things, they have a chequered time before them. Pretty well for the
doctor who hated sick people, Wards, and Stoneborough; but, after all,
I have liked none of our weddings better. I like people to rub one
another brighter.'

'And I am proud when the least unselfish nature has from first to last
done the most unselfish things. No one of us has ever given up so much
as Tom, and I am sure he will be happy in it.'

More can hardly be said without straying into the realms of prediction;
yet such of our readers as are bent on carrying on their knowledge of
the Daisies beyond the last sentence, may be told that, to the best of
our belief, Leonard's shoemaking is not his foremost office in the
mission, where he finds that fulness of hopeful gladness which
experience shows is literally often vouchsafed to those who have given
up home, land, and friends, for the Gospel's sake. His letters are the
delight of more than one at Stoneborough; and his sister, upon her
sofa, is that home member of a mission without whom nothing can be
done--the copier of letters, the depot of gifts, the purveyor of
commissions, the maker of clothes, the collector of books, the keeper
of accounts--so that the house still merits the name of the S. P. G.
office, as it used to be called in the Spenserian era. But Mrs. Thomas
May is a good deal more than this. Her sofa is almost a renewal of the
family centre that once Margaret's was; the region where all tidings
are brought fresh for discussion, all joys and sorrows poured out, the
external influence that above all has tended to soften Gertrude into
the bright grace of womanhood. Mary Cheviot and Blanche Ernescliffe
cannot be cured of a pitying 'poor Tom'--as they speak of 'the
Professor'--in which title the awkward sound of Dr. Tom has bee