frilled cushions, her
face white and unconscious, she looked strangely like her mother,
whom he had buried out in the churchyard four years ago. He went
to the filter for a glass of water, and, as it trickled, wondered
in a dull, mechanical kind of way if his little dead wife thought
he had been too quick in appointing Esther to her kingdom. And
then, as he stood near the sofa and looked at the death-like face,
he wondered with a cold chill at his heart whether Meg was going
to die, too, and if so would she be able to tell the same little
wife that Esther received more tenderness at his hands than she
had done.

His reverie was interrupted by the doctor's sharp, surprised
voice. He was talking to Esther, who had been hastily summoned to
the scene, and who had helped to unfasten the pretty bodice.

"Why, the child is tight-laced!" he said; "surely you must
have noticed it, madam. That pressure, if it has been constant,
has been enough to half kill her. Chut, chut! faint indeed--I wonder
she has not taken fits or gone into a decline before this."

Then a cloud of trouble came over Esther's beautiful face--she had
failed again in her duty. Her husband was regarding her almost
gloomily from the sofa, where the little figure lay in its
crumpled muslin dress, and her heart told her these children
were not receiving a mother's care at her hands.

Afterwards, when Meg was safely in bed and the excitement
all over, she went up to her husband almost timidly.

"I'm only twenty; Jack; don't be too hard on me!" she said
with a little sob in her voice. "I can't be all to them that
she was, can I?"

He kissed the bright, beautiful head against his shoulder,
and comforted her with a tender word or two. But again and again
that night there came to him Meg's white, still face as it lay on
the scarlet cushions, and he knew the wind that stirred the
curtains at the window had been playing with the long grass in
the churchyard a few minutes since.

CHAPTER X

Bunty in the Light of a Hero

"'I know him to be valiant.'
'I was told that by one that knows him better than you.'
'What's he?'
'Marry, he told the so himself, and he said
he cared not who knew it'"

Bunty had been betrayed into telling another story. It was a
very, big one, and he was proportionately miserable. Everyone
else had gone out but Meg, who was still in bed after her fainting
fit, and he had been having a